Chapter 33

Layla

The low hum of the engine filled the empty spaces of the vast luxury car. I’d taken the middle seat, and Eli nestled in beside me. Our hands folded into our laps, bound in zip ties tight enough to cut skin.

Though he pressed against my side, Eli didn’t cry, didn’t whimper, didn’t tremble. He was as silent and stoic as I imagine his father might have been—and for some reason, the thought both unsettled and reassured me.

In the front seat, Marco drove with one hand on the wheel, silent. His gun sat in the cupholder beside him, too far for me to grab.

He knew what he was doing, I’d give him that much. I was starting to suspect this wasn’t his first kidnapping.

And yet, I couldn’t stop the words of disbelief from spilling. “I thought we were friends, Marco. I trusted you.”

I should have listened to Aldo, I didn’t say. Couldn’t let myself think it. Not now.

I didn’t expect an answer. It had all been an act, a farce. He didn’t care to offer an explanation for his falsehoods and lies. But to my surprise, he glanced up, and his soft grey eyes met mine in the rearview mirror.

“Yes,” he said, his voice barely more than a whisper. “We were. We weren’t supposed to be.”

“The hell does that mean?”

His jaw tightened, and his eyes fell back to the road. “It means that my ambition is bigger than our friendship.”

“Ambition.” I scoffed. “Not as a doctor, surely. With the Morettis? This is about you proving yourself to someone in the Mafia?”

Anger welled inside my chest—thick and hot and red, like blood. Was I really nothing more than a tool, a pawn, a token to be used between warring clans of criminals?

All that I’d worked for in my life, all that I’d suffered, all that I’d earned, all that I’d given to this world, and that’s what I’d been reduced to?

“You’re risking the life of a friend, you’re risking Eli’s life, to … what? Prove you’re a better criminal than the rest of them?”

Marco’s knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. “Do you have any idea what it’s like growing up a bastard child in the mob? Knowing—proving over and over again—that you were born for this life, and still having nothing?”

“No,” I said flatly. “I can honestly say I do not.”

“I’ve spent my whole life proving I’m smart—smarter than the rest of them. Tougher than the rest of them. More loyal, more skilled, more cunning. More willing to do whatever it takes. And still, they only see my bloodlines.”

He didn’t speak the next words, but I heard them anyway. This will make them see I am worthy of the Moretti name.

The anger in me flared hot as a firework, but fear tempered that rage. Fear for myself, fear for Eli. “How the hell will kidnapping me and Eli prove anything?”

But Marco’s face had hardened into a cold mask—oh, how well I knew that look, the way expression just shut down. Closed off. Vanished behind robotic placidity. “I’m sorry it had to be this way, truly.”

“Me too,” I murmured. “I should never have trusted you.”

His mask didn’t crack. Instead, he turned the car into a dim underground parking garage. The low lighting covered any expression he might have let show anyway.

The car stopped.

He climbed out, opened my door. “Let’s go.”

Words clipped and cold. The mask, just like Aldo. Just like all these Mafia bastards.

But with the gun aimed at my chest, what else could I do? I slid from the car. I walked where he pointed. Together, he, Eli, and I climbed into a shiny silver elevator.

Like a family unit I’d once thought we might be. How fucking naive that Layla had been! Cooking dinner! Like I might actually be free of this shit.

The elevator climbed and climbed and climbed. Bastard, maybe he was, but he still lived in the fucking penthouse of a Manhattan condo. Yeah, he was really suffering.

The doors opened, letting us out into a sprawling luxury condo. Windows comprised the entire back wall, flooding the room in sunlight and glistening silver skyrise views.

Would’ve been breathtaking, without the gun at my back.

“Sit.” Marco gestured towards the massive leather couch beside the window, facing an enormous flat screen TV.

Neither Eli nor I uttered a peep of protest as we slid over the shining hardwood floors to sit behind a carved wooden coffee table. My own hard face reflected back at me from the silent TV—pale, frightened, determined.

A woman who’d fight to protect the tiny boy at her side.

With the sun still aimed at my chest, I lowered my lips to Eli’s hair, pressed a kiss against his temple. “Hanging in there, baby?”

“I’m okay, Mommy.” He nodded against my chin.

“Good. We’re gonna be fine. Everything’s gonna be fine.” It wasn’t a lie I believed so much as a reality I’d manifest into being. I’d make it true.

“You must be hungry.” Marco slipped the gun back out of sight, and the faintest smile crossed his features—a soft smile. Friendly. “We never got to finish dinner, did we?”

Shit. Dinner. The pan on the stove, the food fading to coldness. I’d been hungry then, but now, my stomach felt far too cold and clenched to even consider food.

“I’ll get you something.” Marco strode for the open kitchen, stride loping, tone open and easy. “I’m actually a really good cook.”

Like we were here on a dinner invite! Like he hadn’t just brought us here at gunpoint.

“You know,” I said simply as he returned with two plates heaped with pasta. “You could have just invited us here for dinner.”

“You know Aldo would have followed you.” Marco slid into the armchair beside the sofa. “This way it was just us having dinner and going for a drive.”

He smiled, and his gaze dropped back to the pasta. “Please. Eat.”

His eyes, those words, they were almost … expectant? Like he wanted me to eat the food he offered. Like, what, he wanted me to dig in and compliment him on his cooking?

Fat chance.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” I didn’t pick up the fork. Beside me, Eli clutched his to lift a tiny tendril of pasta from the plate.

Marco’s face fell from its easy smile into stark sobriety. “Because I care about you, Layla. That was never a lie.”

I’d heard a lot of lies in the past few weeks. But this—this was one I believed. And that made it all so much sadder.

“You’ve never had a real friend, have you?” I murmured, and I picked up the fork before he could respond. “Do you think this is what friendship is?”

“No,” he agreed, leaning forward so I couldn’t help but be drawn into his earnest grey gaze. “This isn’t easy for me. I know what I’m doing—to you and to Eli. But my entire life has been fighting—for everything. For respect, for recognition. For jobs. For a place at the fucking dinner table.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that. So I didn’t. I merely lifted my fork to my lips and took a bite of pasta. Some faraway part of my brain registered that it was good.

But it tasted like ash against my tongue.

“And then,” Marco’s fingers twined together, suspended between his knees over the coffee table, “I met you. And you treated me like I was someone worth knowing. Like a friend.”

I almost choked on the ashen food in my mouth, on the sincerity in his voice. He believed those words—and that made them true.

“Then let me go,” I said, gently but firmly. Like a mother scolding a child. “You don’t have to do this.”

He leaned back into the armchair. “That’s where you’re wrong. You’re my friend. But the Mafia … the Mafia is family.”

“And what happens to us,” I asked, the fork still clenched in my fingers. “When you make whatever move you’re planning to make, what happens to me? To Eli?”

Marco’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t respond. He simply rose from the chair and strode to the window. With his back to us, I could clearly discern the outline of the gun. “Don’t worry about that now. Enjoy dinner, Layla. My love.”

He really did believe that. Believed that he cared about me, loved me, even. And that made this all so much sadder, so much harder … but maybe it gave me a card to play. Maybe it gave me something I could work with.

Just … maybe.

I dug my fork into my pasta. And I ate.