Borrowed Bride: A Fake Marriage, Secret Baby, Dark, Mafia Romance (Mafia Lords of Sin)

“Mommy! Mommy!”

With a sweet cheer, my darling six-year-old daughter flies into my room and throws herself up onto my bed, exploding into a burst of giggles.

In the five years we’ve been in hiding, Freya has grown into the most adorable child ever. She has Marco’s ice-blue eyes and my auburn curls, making her the perfect creation from the both of us.

And she is blissfully unaware of the turbulent life she has been born into. She kicks her legs in the air, sending the frills of her skirt flying toward her hips, then she rolls over and stares at me as I push myself up onto my elbows.

“Well, good morning Freya.”

“Morning!”

“You have a lot of energy for eight o’clock.”

“No school!” Freya slides from my bed and then runs out of my room, cackling.

I laugh softly, sliding from the bed with a yawn. Ever since Dante brought me here five years ago, I’ve never stepped foot outside because it’s far too dangerous. Which means my only option for Freya was home-schooling. It’s been a challenge and sometimes I feel like we’re both learning something new, but I enjoy watching her grow and flourish.

It’s the only thing I have any control over.

Dressing quickly, I follow the sound of her giggles and find her in the bathroom attempting to brush her teeth. Together, we make a game of it and then it’s breakfast time.

The secluded penthouse Dante brought me to after my life exploded into smithereens has more luxury than I could ever dream of. With a full wall of floor-to-ceiling windows, I’m spoiled with a gorgeous view of a city torn apart by war.

A war that makes it impossible for me or my daughter to leave. Not until she’s older.

So, for the past five years, I’ve lived here raising Freya by myself with scarce visits from Dante who often only brings bad news. News of death and rioting, of murder and more.

The world went to shit after Marco died.

At least, the world thinks he’s dead.

Sometimes, I’m not so sure.

After a breakfast of fruit and yogurt, I carry Freya to her playroom and set her down in front of a hand-crafted doll house. She immediately sets about entertaining herself, and I sit nearby and bury myself in my laptop, keeping one eye on her at all times.

In the beginning, grief swamped me, and I didn’t do much of anything. The weeks after the explosion, I felt like I was adrift in an ocean surrounded by sharks. Leonardo was on the warpath because he thought our engagement and the wedding were an elaborate plan to kill him. Someone else took over leading the Barrone family and they certainly wouldn’t look at me kindly since, as Dante put it, to others it looked like I led the assassin right to Marco.

I hadn’t even considered that Fawn would still be shadowing me, and my heart breaks every time I think of her standing in that hallway with murder in her eyes.

So, I had no choice but to lay low and try to piece some semblance of a life back together. Focusing on raising Freya made the months fly by and before I knew it, the world was moving on and I was mostly forgotten.

In the streets of the city below, an exhausting war still rages between Barrone and Simone. It’s bloody and consuming the entire city by this point, but it’s been going on for so long that no one really remembers why it even started. For the Barrones, I suspect they were seeking revenge for Marco’s death, and Leonardo was responding in kind, but after five years, there’s just a lot of anger and death.

When Freya turned three, I started to notice a few things that stuck out to me. Dante would visit and constantly tell me I was safe here, and that it wasn’t safe to leave. I believed him, until one day I was climbing the walls and decided a walk would be the best way to clear my head. That was when I discovered I couldn’t leave.

The single elevator was fingerprint activated, and my prints were not in the system. When I asked Dante about it on his next visit, he told me how important these security precautions were and claimed he was only keeping me safe out of respect for Marco. Otherwise, he would toss me to the two families eager to slaughter me, and then who would protect Freya?

I realized that day that I wasn’t being kept safe. I was being kept prisoner.

Then Dante stopped visiting.

The lights stayed on, and food was still delivered each month, but other than that, I had no interaction with anyone. Dante never picked up his phone when I called, and despite spending so long shadowing me, I never heard from Fawn either. Without any idea what happened to Tara or Emilia, I slowly realized that the life I thought I had ended the moment Marco died.

But that didn’t keep me down for long.

Now, I’m researching.

I’ve become pretty deft at it by now, but reclaiming details from memory is complicated. In my last conversation with Marco, he showed me a folder containing the names of women and children he had helped escape this life. It was his proof that the Barrone family never touched the skin trade.

All that proof burned up with Marco, so I’ve been compiling it myself to the best of my ability. Going off of the phone numbers and names I remembered, I’ve been able to contact quite a few women that Marco helped, and all of them have been safe in new lives and speak so highly of him. I didn’t have the heart to tell any of them that he blew up and instead congratulated them on their new lives.

Unfortunately, none of them remember much about the people Marco used to get them a new life. Part of me was hoping that whoever rescued those women could help me out of this predicament, but Marco covered all his bases.

There’s no trail for me to follow.

For each five women that I find alive and safe, there’s one I can’t contact. The missing women could have simply moved on and continued to live in secret, but each time I find a woman who remains missing, I can’t help but wonder.

Marco mentioned that someone else was the bad guy, and swore he wasn’t responsible for what happened to Fawn. Was that person involved in his rescue operations, or was it just a coincidence?

My days are spent chasing shadows of the past and raising my daughter. As she gets older, my determination grows to give her the same free life that Marco gave these women, but I’m severely lacking resources.

I still have his card, but I haven’t needed to use it since Dante placed me here. I have no idea if those kinds of cards have an expiration date, or if it will even work since his death but I keep it all the same.

Because sometimes, in the dark of night when I’m buried in exploring news articles and reports on the Mafia war tearing apart the city, there will be something that catches my attention. A shadow in the crowd of the news report or a story of a heroic act with no picture and a bare-bones description; things like that catch my eye.

And I begin to wonder if Marco is alive.

Wishful thinking.

I spent the day researching a woman named Maria. Once I track down her new name, Hayley, and give her a call, I quiz her about the people who came to her house the night of her disappearance. Just like the others, she remembers faces but no names and never saw any of them again. She asks why I’m calling after eight years, and when I tell her I’m looking for those people to help someone, she wishes me luck.

It’s sweet but ultimately useless.

Freya and I eat dinner together and then I abandon the laptop and spend the rest of the evening playing cafe with her. She’s an amusing tyrant in the workplace and each time she cackles like a maniac, I’m reminded of the sharp edge to Marco’s laugh.

I miss him. I’m trapped with no way out and the longer I’m here, the more I contemplate smashing the windows and trying to climb down the outside of the building.

It works in movies, right?

By the time Freya has served me my eighth cup of cherry tea, she’s yawning her little head off, so I scoop her up and we begin our nightly routine.noveldrama

A shower, a story, and then she’s tucked up in bed claiming she’s not tired right up until she falls asleep against me. I kiss her head and tuck her in, then slip from her room and begin my nightly routine.

I pour a glass of wine and wander from the open plan kitchen to the lounge with my phone in hand, intent on calling Dante until I get pissed off.

Only, instead of hitting the dial on his number, my wine glass slips from my fingers and smashes on the hardwood floor as a dark figure melts out of the shadows in my lounge. I’m a split second away from screaming in fright when the figure lowers their hood and I meet the familiar, cold eyes of Fawn Simone.

Her black hair is long gone, replaced by a platinum blonde.

“So,” Fawn says, looking me up and down. “You’re actually alive. Here we all thought you were dead.”