Page 2 of Mafia King’s Dangerous Vow

“You’re what I have to offer.” He straightens his tie in the darkened window. “This is how it’s done.”

“No.” My voice rises despite myself. “This is how you do things. I have my own life. My business.” Eight years building rooms no one could lock me inside. Eight years making my name mean something without his attached to it. “You don’t get to decide I suddenly belong to some stranger because it’s strategically convenient.”

The church looms ahead of us, white stone and gold crosses cutting into the gray sky. Through the glass, I can see people filing inside.

Guests.

Witnesses.

“No,” I say again, harder. “Absolutely not. I won’t marry a man I’ve never met. I don’t want this kind of life.”

For a fraction of a second, calculation moves across his face, replaced by annoyance. Then it’s gone.

“This life is what I have to offer,” he says, his voice grinding low. “It’s a life we understand. A life that keeps us alive.”

“That’s bullshit.” I’m aware I’m practically shouting now. “I don’t need you to offer me anything. I’m fine. I have a career. I have my own apartment. I’m not one of your soldiers waiting around for orders.”

His jaw tightens, and when he looks at me again, his eyes are stripped of everything human.

“You do as you’re told, Tamara,” he says quietly, and the softness in his tone is chilling, “and you might see your baby again.”

For a second, the sentence has no meaning.

It is only sound.

Baby.

Again.

My body understands before my mind does. My stomach drops so violently I reach for the door handle, not to escape this time, but to steady myself. The cathedral blurs beyond the glass. Gold domes. Gray sky. People moving toward the entrance as if the world has not just split open inside this car.

I’ve been in negotiations where everything rode on my next word. I’ve sat across from men who underestimated me and smiled while I cut them apart.

I have never gone blank before.

I go blank now.

“What?” I finally manage. “What did you just say?”

“You heard me.”

The world tips sideways. My heart slams so hard it hurts.

“Mark,” I whisper.

Eight years of believing my son never took a breath. Eight years of carrying an absence so heavy it became part of my body. Eight years of lighting a candle every November, of walking past baby clothes in stores too fast, of that small heart tattoo on my wrist that I got because I needed somewhere to put the grief.

When they pressed a lifeless newborn into my arms, I named him anyway. Even though he would never hear it.

“No.” Tears burn down my face. “No. Mark was stillborn. I held him. I saw him. They told me⁠—”

“That wasn’t your child.”

The words slice clean through me.

Not my child.

The little body wrapped in hospital cotton. The face I forced myself to look at because I thought a mother should know her son, even if she only got him for minutes.