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

I’ll never grow used to the chemical scent that exists in a hospital. It’s so sharp that my nose burns as I crack open my eyes and take a slow look around the room.

Pale light creeps in through the half-shut blinds, trembling due to the force of the rain pouring down outside. An endless gray sky stretches out like a turbulent ocean, and I gaze at it from where I lie, working through a drug-addled, sluggish mind.

It’s been eight months since I left Marco. Eight months of running and hiding, using every trick in the book to survive. Those tricks grew fewer and fewer as my belly swelled with new life, and soon, there was nothing left for me to do but scrape together my last few dollars and try to make it back to familiar territory.

I failed.

Stress, exhaustion, and malnutrition tossed me into early labor in the middle of a supermarket in a small town well off the beaten path. My last memory is of a terrified store clerk yelling into her headset about an ambulance. Everything after that is a blur: doctors and nurses asking me questions I couldn’t answer, demanding insurance information, and then a mask over my face as they tell me my baby is coming.

My daughter came into the world via C-section at 4:32 in the morning.

I slowly adjust myself on the bed and wince as a dull pain—kept at bay by the painkillers in my blood—throbs across my lower abdomen. It’s jarring to see a much smaller bump under the covers. I press my hands over the area as my mind races through the fog, struggling to organize my thoughts.

Just as I’m gathering myself, the door to my room swings open and in walks a smiley nurse with tightly curled blonde hair. She pushes something on wheels in front of her and it’s not until she stops beside my bed that I realize what it is.

A makeshift cot.

“Oh look! Mamma’s awake!” The nurse says cheerily, cooing down at the baby. “How are you feeling, Mom?”

I blink hazily up at her, and when I speak, my tongue rests heavily in my mouth. “Tired,” I say. “I’m sorry, I—I don’t remember … how did I get here?” My eyes drop to the baby bundled up tightly in a pink blanket. “Is she okay?”

“You’re a little under the weather so the doctor had to sedate you, but don’t you worry, everything went perfectly. You’re both happy and healthy!”

She’s far too happy for my liking and I fight the urge to roll my eyes. “I can’t afford to be here,” I murmur, bracing my hands down on the bed and easing myself painfully into a sitting position. “How long until they kick me out?”

“Listen mamma, don’t you worry about that right now,” the nurse grins, and she bustles about my bed for a minute or two, then she pauses next to me. “Do you want to hold your baby?”

Your baby.

I feel so strangely detached from those words and my heart begins to race.

What if something is wrong? What if I hold her and she cries? What if I feel nothing? What if she can tell that I’m not built to be a mother?

Those thoughts and more swarm my mind as the nurse holds my gaze, and after a few seconds, I nod. I can’t think of anything else to say.

The nurse beams at me, and with practiced ease, she scoops the baby up from the crib and gently eases her into my arms, giving a few quiet instructions to support her head and keep her close.

In an instant, the baby becomes my baby.

My daughter.

The room fades to nothing, and the nurse’s words grow muted as I stare down at this absolutely gorgeous, perfect little face. My daughter scrunches her nose, and she gurgles faintly despite her closed eyes.

She’s perfect.

A painful warmth suddenly blooms out from my chest, and I can’t breathe because of how intense the rush of love is. Tears warm behind my eyes, and all my stresses and fears are momentarily forgotten.

“See?” the nurse speaks softly. “Holding her makes everything else unimportant.”

She’s right. From the first touch, all I care about is keeping her safe. The surge of love is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before, and with it comes a stab of sadness in my heart.

Did my mother ever feel like this? And if she did, how could she give me the terrible life I lead?

“Is there anyone I can call for you?” the nurse asks.

I shake my head. “No,” I whisper, lightly touching my daughter’s forehead. “There’s no one.”

“Have you thought of a name?”

Staring down at her adorable, scrunchy face, I nod just once as the tears come. “I’m going to call her Freya.”

The second time I wake up, my attention is immediately on the crib by my bed. The nurse had been kind enough to talk me through breastfeeding, though a deep sense of failure sat heavy in my chest when I failed to provide any milk for Freya. According to the nurse, it’s very common and we were to try again later after more rest.

My room is dark now, and the only light comes from the machines around my bed monitoring me and my baby. My body aches, and my heart is full, yet weighed down at the same time, and I can’t take my eyes off her as she sleeps soundly next to me.

How did I do this? How did I keep myself hidden and grow another human inside of me? This miracle is almost beyond my understanding because someone like me should not be capable of creating something as small and perfect as her.

“Cute kid,” says a husky voice from the darkness.

My heart lurches and I jerk upward on my bed, scanning the shadows for where that strange voice came from. I see nothing at all, yet just as I fear it was my imagination, there’s a scuffle of fabric.

My hand shoots out to the alarm button near my bed, and as I repeatedly press the button, husky laughter flows from the shadows.

“I already cut the line,” says the voice. “But go to town.”

The voice is right. Lifting my hand, the alarm button is attached only to two inches of cable. The rest is cut and out of sight. My heart pounds against my ribs so hard it’s a wonder the bones don’t break, and a wave of dizziness washes over me.

“Who are you?” I demand hoarsely, scanning the darkness and straining my eyes. “Show yourself!”

“Careful,” says the voice. There’s a click and the small lamp beside the couch turns on, revealing the owner of the voice. “You’ll wake the baby.”

A beautiful woman clad in leather pants, a white T-shirt, and a leather jacket sits on the couch, watching me with dark-lined eyes. Her ruby-red lips purse into a small O as she toys with the sleek, sharp knife in her right hand.

Our eyes meet, and there’s a familiarity about her that I can’t quite place through the haze in my mind. All I can think about is the knife and that this stranger is in the same room as my baby.

Stitches be damned, I will protect her.

“Are you here to kill me?” I ask. My voice wavers from the force of my heart racing, and I swallow around the dryness parching my mouth. “Here, in a hospital?”

“No,” the woman says. She stands slowly and her heeled biker boots clack softly against the floor. “I’m not here to kill you, Gianna.”

“You know my name.” I can’t remember what name I gave to the doctors when I arrived here, but I’m certain medical staff don’t dress like her. She looks like an assassin right out of some kind of action movie, and I can’t take my eyes off her.

“Of course I know your name,” the woman says as she wanders slowly toward the end of my bed. “You don’t recognize me?”

I squint through the low light, mapping out the slopes of her angular jaw, small nose, and the flow of jet-black hair. Should I recognize her?

“I’m hurt,” the woman says, sounding not very hurt at all. “I would have thought you’d recognize me instantly.”

“I just had a baby,” I mutter, tensing as she walks closer and closer to where Freya lies sleeping next to me. “I barely remember my own name.”

“Think,” the woman says. The knife glints dangerously in the light as she stops next to the crib, and my heart leaps into my throat as a pulse of sickly fear washes over me.

I stare at her, then at Freya, wracking my brain for any inkling of recognition.

And then, as the woman leans over the crib to stare down at my daughter, it clicks like the snap of a lock in my mind.

“Amanda?”

She straightens up suddenly, and smiles coldly. “Of course. I forgot I went by a different name when we met. But you know my real name too, don’t you?”

I nod slowly, thinking back to Marco’s reaction when he found that picture of my past. To me, that woman was Amanda. To Marco?”

“Fawn,” I say softly. “You’re … you’re really not dead?” Part of me had hoped Marco was just mistaken but here she is, standing in front of me and very much alive. “I don’t understand.”

“Of course you don’t.” Fawn rests one hand on the edge of the crib and I can’t take my eyes off it.

I’m terrified she’s about to do something to my daughter and I’m useless, with only a few staples holding my insides where they’re supposed to be.

“You look … good,” I say, searching for the right thing to say.

Fawn eyes me through narrow lids. “Leaving behind a life of sex work does wonders,” she says. “But you, my little dove. Imagine my surprise when we crossed paths again. From the look in your eyes, you really are as clueless as I suspected.”

I have no answer for her, unable to breathe until she removes her hand from Freya’s crib.

“Maybe you can enlighten me,” I say weakly, watching as she walks slowly back to the end of my bed. “These drugs aren’t kind on the mind.”

“Killer painkillers though, right?”

I nod. “Sure.”

“Well, Gianna. It’s been a long time since we saw one another so I’ll be straight with you. We have history beyond what you could ever imagine. My name is Fawn Deleware but my real name?” She spins the knife in her hand. “Fawn Simone.”

“Simone?” I choke on the word as Leonardo bursts into my mind, “Leo is your brother?”

“Yes. But he thinks I am dead too, and I plan on keeping it that way. You see, I was training to be an assassin under my father’s instruction when I was just a teenager. I was pretty good at it, and still am.”

From how effortlessly that knife dances around her fingers, I have no cause to doubt her.noveldrama

“And I was given a task. A simple task that I had done a hundred times before. Kill Marco Barrone.”

My heart skips a beat.

“But instead, I fell for that bastard’s sickening charm and chose love over death. How fucking foolish.”

As Fawn talks, I subtly pull on the chord and draw the crib closer and closer to me. I need Freya as close to me as she can get. “Marco told me you both fell in love. He called you the love of his life, but you were there to kill him?”

“Of course he did,” Fawn scoffs darkly. “That man is a fucking puppy.”

“I don’t understand. You were there to kill him, and you … didn’t?” Marco never mentioned any of this. If anything, it sounds too far-fetched to be real, and I get the impression she is toying with me.

“Is it really that hard to believe?” she says. “You know the little crooked V-shaped scar Marco has on his hip?”

I frown at the thought, distantly aware of the scar. As much as we fucked, I never spent much time exploring his body.

“That was from an attempt. He thought I was into knife play, so I let him think what he wanted. And then he seduced me.” She speaks as if recounting something affectionate, and then her voice hardens to steel. “I thought we were going to be together forever until he sold me into the sex slave trade, and my life turned to hell.”

“What?!” I balk at the accusation and a sickening coldness seeps through my gut. “You lie!”

“Do I?” Fawn snarls slightly. “Do you think I chose a life of prostitution? I was sold into it by Marco Barrone as punishment for being sent to kill him. Any decent man worth their salt would have challenged me in a duel, but not that fucking scum bag. And I knew! I knew about the rumors surrounding his family and the whispers in the dark, but I was fooled by his dreamy eyes and that fucking smirk.”

“No,” I whisper, and the sting of bile crawls slowly up my throat. “This can’t be—no, he would never!”

In all our talks and everything I overheard while at the mansion, I never once got any hint that Marco had anything to do with human trafficking.

“I don’t believe you,” I spit at her. “You could say anything and then stand there, expecting me to believe the word of a stranger?”

Fawn is over me in an instant—she moves so fast I scarcely even see her. She grips my throat with unexpected strength and shoves me back down against the pillows.

“Don’t you dare call me a liar,” she hisses in my face. “Are you really so blind? Did you wander that estate with your eyes and ears closed? Everyone knows the reputation of the Barrone family. Their reputation and his presence are tied to the disappearance of countless women and children, with their men slaughtered so no one goes looking. The Barrones are balls deep in the skin trade, Gianna, and your ignorance doesn’t change that. Even his own sister wasn’t safe from their twisted ways!”

I almost blurt out the truth about Emilia in an attempt to save myself from Fawn’s claws, but I stop myself just in time. Despite everything, I can’t betray her like that.

“No,” I gasp, gripping Fawn’s rigid wrist as hard as I can. “You must be mistaken.”

“Stop being so foolish!” Fawn snarls and she rips herself away from me, leaving me gasping for air as the phantom pressure of her palm clings to my throat.

I gasp for air, massaging my neck as I slowly sit back up. “When we met,” I say raggedly. “Were you in the sex trade then? Four years ago?”

Fawn scoffs. “If I say yes? You can’t pick and choose what you believe to be the truth, Gianna. I tell you yes, and you believe me, but you refuse to see what’s right in front of you about Marco. He’s dangerous. No one touches the skin trade but the lowest of low scumbags, and Marco Barrone is one of them.”

My heart races so loudly that my blood roars in my ears. Marco. The man I fell for, who was so painfully gentle with his sister? It doesn’t fit. I can’t believe it.

And yet, Fawn is real. She is right there and it’s clear she has been through hell.

“You know.” Fawn begins to pace. “It was you that spurred me to grasp for freedom. I saw what you did to Cherry and Mango, turning on them like that?” She lets out a low whistle. “It was the wake-up call I needed. I killed my captors, freed myself, and spent the past four years hunting down and killing all the powerful men that purchased me. All of it has been practice. A way to hone my skills.”

“For what?” I ask, still massaging my throat.

“To come back and kill Marco. The fucker that started it all. But imagine my surprise when I saw you hanging off his arm all of a sudden. You know, it was me that got Cherry out of prison. She might be a bitch but she’s fucking skilled and exactly the type of woman that could get close to Marco. And instead …”

Fawn’s eyes glint at me through the low light and finally, she slides the knife into a sheath on her thigh.

“It was you. Pretty little Gianna. Innocent little Gianna.”

My head spins, warring with what I feel to be true, and all this new information Fawn provides.

“And I saw myself.” Fawn’s voice is suddenly soft. “I saw his next victim and I knew I had to get you out of there.”

“No,” I whimper as tears flood my eyes, fueled by conflicting hormones and confused thoughts. “Marco was nice to me. He was always nice, and I was on the streets, Fawn. I know the Barrone’s only deal in drugs!”

“Of course that’s the word they put out on the street,” Fawn snorts. “Do you think anyone would buy from them if they knew the truth? I can give you names. Countless names of missing women and children he sold on the black market. I could show you pictures that would make you sick.”

She sighs deeply and her tongue clicks behind her teeth.

“Instead, I got you out. Shame about Tara, though.”

Cold prickles down my arms and through my tears, I glare at Fawn as the pieces slowly click together. “Tara?” I say tightly. “You did that? You hurt her?!”

Fawn nods. “A necessary incident.”

“What the fuck did she do to deserve that?” I yell suddenly, and Freya snuffles in her crib. “You nearly killed her!”

“She was feistier than I expected,” Fawn admits. “But I needed to make you see the danger you were in, Gianna.”

“So far, the only danger here is you,” I mutter.

“Your little Tara was digging a little too close to home about Cherry, and I could see how you looked at Marco with fucking doe eyes. As soon as you learned that Cherry was up to something, I knew it was only a matter of time before you told Marco. And then he would sell you, like he sells everyone else. So I did what I had to do to get you away from him.”

Thinking of Tara in that hospital bed makes me weep and I ache to know what happened to her. “You couldn’t have picked up the phone?” I ask through my tears, sobbing softly as my chest cracks with grief.

Is Marco really a monster? Has he been selling women and children on the black market? Was his story to me about needing a wife all part of some elaborate ruse?

“You wouldn’t believe me,” Fawn says. “Because you don’t believe me now after everything you’ve seen. But I would rather you don’t believe me while being miles and miles away from those monsters. So I don’t really care.”

“Then why are you here?” I snap, raising my head to her. “I’m out! I left him. I’ve been running. So why even come here and tell me all of this?”

“I check in on you from time to time,” Fawn says, and her voice is softer. “Cherry found the pregnancy test in the bathroom not long after you left, and I realized there was a danger you would go back to him. Pregnant and alone? He would look like Fort Knox. So when I heard you went into early labor, I came to make sure that never happens.”

“You just expect me to believe you, huh?”

“No,” Fawn says. “But look into your heart, Gianna. Think about what you know, or even how little you know. You have a daughter to protect⁠—”

“I swear to God,” I spit, rising slightly on the bed. “If you harm her, I will kill you, do you hear me?!”

Fawn laughs lightly. “You wouldn’t stand a chance against me, darling. But I’m not here for that. I am not the monster here. I’m here to offer you safety.”

“Safety?” I spit, wiping furiously at my tears. “You harm my friend to force me away from the man I love, then you tell me all of these horrific things in order to keep me away from him. Where is the safety in any of that?”

“I’m not the only one on your tail,” Fawn says. “I’m just the one that got here first. You have to understand, Gianna, that while Marco is a monster, his child is like liquid gold to his enemies. The both of you are.”

Hopelessness washes over me in a suffocating wave. “So what?” I whisper. “What the hell do you expect me to do?”

“You mustn’t tell anyone about me, but Leonardo can help you.”

“Leo?” I gasp, thinking back to the last time I saw him in that warehouse. “He’s Marco’s enemy.”

“For good reason,” Fawn mutters. “But he is a good man and he can keep you safe. You can’t run anymore, Gianna, not with a newborn. You need protection.”

Fawn has clearly endured hell, but her hatred for Marco might be clouding her judgment. Still, the offer of safety for my daughter, for a life away from the violence, is tempting.

If only to give me a few months to bond and rest with my child. Leonardo, to his credit, has always been kind to me. That doesn’t change how I feel deep down, though. My love for Marco is boundless, and yet it sours in my mind with the new information.

She was right. As soon as I held Freya in my arms, I was overwhelmed with the urge to return to Marco.

But what if Fawn is right? What if staying with Marco means endangering Freya’s life?

My chest tightens like a rubber band as I weigh my options, my mind clouded with hormones, fear, and doubt. “I need time to think,” I whisper, shaking my head.

Fawn’s laugh cuts through me like an icicle. “Did you listen to a word I just said? There’s no time, Gianna. You have no idea who else is watching you. You don’t have forever to decide. I’m here, offering you one single chance.”

My aching heart pounds as Fawn’s words sink in. Fawn found me, so who knows who will be next to walk through that door?

I’m running out of time, and my decision now won’t just determine my fate—it will decide my daughter’s future.

As Fawn’s cold eyes bore into mine, I grow sick under the weight of the horrifying truth:

No matter what choice I make, someone will pay the price.

I have to do what is best for Freya.