Page 26 of Forbidden Pregnancy (The Buffalo Italian Mob Family #2)

Chapter Twenty-Two

Myra

Present Day

I wait in the front doorway with Michael for Cosima’s arrival.

I don’t recognize the guy who drops her off, but he has black hair and he’s even taller than Michael.

Maybe his cousin. Cosima hugs her brother reluctantly and when she breaks the hug and notices me standing behind him on the porch, she smiles at me and then allows the smile to break into something bigger and happier.

Every time I see CC, she has the same expression of startled excitement – like she can’t believe we’re meeting each other again.

I left her a letter when I abandoned my position, but I explained it in terms a child could understand, stretching the truth so she would believe that I had a sudden financial opportunity.

I protect Cosima and her brother equally from the truth, even if Cosima knows exactly how terrifying her family can be.

Knowing what I know now, that much is obvious.

Even her little incident with slipping the pill in my drink can be explained away by how fucked up her life must have been growing up in a mob family that could hardly distinguish between tradition and hatred.

Cosima pins her bangs back with two butterfly clips at the top and she eagerly lets Michael take her bags so we can have a moment alone.

“Please tell me he hasn’t been an asshole the past several months,” Cosima says to me as she hugs me tightly, still refusing to break our hugs first even after all those years apart. Even if she’s a grown woman, and far more cool and composed than the little girl I tutored.

I don’t have good news about her brother’s attitude, but I doubt that will surprise CC.

“He won’t let me find out the baby’s sex.”

Cosima pulls away, folds her arms over her chest and for only a split second, seems disbelieving. Then, she remembers we’re talking about stubborn ass Michael who made sure that I don’t even know the exact location of this safehouse.

“I didn’t think everyone would react this badly,” CC says, her features contorting into disappointment as she considers the depth of mess her sudden interest in organic chemistry has caused all of us.

I don’t regret the life growing inside me.

I won’t ever have a chance to have another baby and even if it means being bound to my sworn enemy for life…

At least that sworn enemy is Michael Corsini. And for a brutal, annoying, and Neanderthalish one-eyed man… he has protected me.

CC glances down at my baby bump once we’ve entered the cabin living room, shutting the front door behind her.

She can’t be surprised that her family would react like this.

I remember how she grew up. That girl had a gilded cage – every material thing provided for her, but male family members controlling every last inch of her life.

I might have come from a much messier background with parents who tried their hardest and still didn’t have enough for me at the end of the day, but I’m not stuck in the fucked up cycle of pain, love, and dependence that these Italian folks have got going on.

Michael has to understand why I don’t want that for my future kids, even if he says it will be alright. Even the most problematic white family doesn’t run around kidnapping and murdering because they don’t approve of an interracial relationship.

CC puts her hands on my shoulders and purses her lips. For the first time since the day she broke her arm flying off that horse, I see tears welling in her eyes. Those tears take me right back to the past with fierce, gripping nostalgia before CC even speaks.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I thought a baby would change their mind. I think I ruined everything.”

Vulnerability (and tears) burst forth from CC and I wrap my arms around her instinctively.

“No,” she whimpers in even more distress. “You shouldn’t be comforting me right now.”

I hold her tighter. She might be right, but this is who I’ve always been – CC’s beacon to the outside world.

I don’t agree with what she did and I won’t ever leave an uncovered drink around her again, but it’s easier to forgive CC than I expected.

Michael clears his throat as CC sniffles into my shoulder.

I flinch and then become suspicious that bringing CC here was part of some specific plan.

But what?

“We can comfort each other. Any interest in a 1,000 piece puzzle?”

“Those are terrible,” CC says. “But I pretty much owe you one.”

“Yes. You do.”

I don’t mind pulling out all the stops. Michael and I would have never been in this predicament if it weren’t for her sleight of hand.

“If you want, I can tell you the baby’s sex,” CC says, following me into the cabin’s cozy living room. I know CC doesn’t have medical training, so I make an educated guess.

“Did you learn dream interpretation or something?”

“No,” CC says. “I can read the cards.”

“I have no idea what that means.”

“Perfect,” CC says. “You don’t need to know. Just trust my fortune telling skills.”

Michael emerges in the living room doorway.

CC and I both stop talking. It’s weird how easy it is to side with her against Michael.

If there’s one thing I remember from over a decade ago, it’s that the men controlled every part of CC’s life and all the women in her family faced similar levels of control.

She only made it this far with this much freedom because she was born a rebel.

Or more likely, she became one. I never completely understood Michael’s investment in his family’s traditions.

At times, it felt like he saw things differently from his family and other times, it felt like he only cared about reinforcing a disturbing Italian patriarchy within his family.

I would stay with him if I knew for sure.

And while we’re in hiding, I can’t really know if he’s different or just living a ‘pretend life’ with me, escaping all his family obligations while secretly considering himself a failure.

CC might have insight into her brother, but maybe she’s too busy worrying about her own problems to care about Michael.

A man in his forties is sure to be a lost cause.

“Can you leave us alone, Michael? I don’t want to put a hex on you.”

“I’ll be taking you to church the first sunday after Myra gives birth,” Michael says forcefully. Their dynamic reminds me of exactly the way it used to be twelve years ago.

“Get a life, Michael,” CC says. “You’re disturbing the baby.”

“The baby is mine. He enjoys my presence and finds me comforting.”

Sadly, Michael is correct. The baby – boy or girl – won’t stop moving around at night until Michael rests his hand on my baby bump. It makes hating him and keeping my distance from Michael downright impossible.

“Keep lying to yourself, CC,” Michael says. But he leaves and I do feel some relief getting a break from Michael’s presence. He returns with a bottle of wine for CC, who pulls out a deck of her magic tarot cards and sits across from me at Michael’s large hand-carved coffee table.

“So…” CC asks while shuffling. “Has he treated you well?”

“He doesn’t let me leave.”

“Aside from that.”

“We’re getting along.”

CC shakes her head. “If Michael screws things up with you, he’s even dumber than I thought.”

“He can’t force his feelings for me,” I tell her. “And adult relationships are about far more than feelings.”

CC shakes her head and bridges the cards. “That’s such bullshit.”

I’m surprised. Normally, she gives pushback to Michael and considering she drugged me and got me in this situation, I expected a little bit of ass-kissing. Maybe it’s the teacher in me.

“Is it?” My response is the patient teacher in me talking too.

There’s another version of me totally unwilling to hear pushback when it comes to my distance with Michael.

Nobody understands what it took for me to walk away from him.

He was my first everything and it hurt that I could never really forget him.

“Yes,” she says, a smirk traveling across her heart-shaped face. When she smirks, she looks more like her brother than any other time. “He’s not forcing feelings. He loves you. I think he had a crush on you from day one. Looking back, I can’t believe he never acted on it.”

Our eyes meet. CC’s adult experience causes her to have a flashback through time, a review of her childhood memories with the valuable context of her grownup experiences to recontextualize what happened.

“Wait,” CC says, her gaze narrowing. “Did you…”

I bite my lip. Even that gives away too much. CC sets her cards down and clamps her hand over her mouth to stop herself from screaming. When she pulls her hands away from her mouth, she shakes her head in disbelief.

“This is a sign,” she says.

“Of what?”

CC pulls a card from the top of the deck. She gasps again.

“It’s a girl.”

“What?”

“It’s a girl,” she says. Then CC looks up at me with her emotional eyes. I don’t know if I believe her divination. There’s a deep intuitive feeling I get that she’s correct, but it’s not scientific at all. And maybe it’s just CC’s unnerving stare.

“How can you know that?”

“Because I’m psychic.”

Hm. There’s definitely something going on with CC, but I’m not sure it’s connection to another realm.

“I don’t believe you.”

“But you believe an ultrasound?”

“Yes…”

CC smiles. “Just kidding. I would too. But my brother is impossible, so now I have to rely on my female intuition and these…”

She fans out the tarot cards and I shake my head. This girl is just as strange as you would expect from somebody who grew up in social isolation, forced to obey strict and random rules until she was an adult. Even now, I don’t think CC realizes how much freedom she’s missing out on.

I know I shouldn’t let my sympathy for her get her off the hook for what she did to me and Michael. She didn’t want to be alone with him anymore, but I would have entered her life willingly if CC had only asked me. She starts shuffling the cards again as I sit with the weight of her prediction.

Can I seriously imagine Michael Corsini as a “girl dad” taking a little mixed race girl to gymnastics classes and track practice? CC bridges the cards and sighs.

“I realized something,” she says. “And I feel stupid for not seeing it earlier.”

I’m expecting an apology.

“You hooked up with my brother,” CC says. “I mean obviously, the pregnancy. But I mean… when you were my tutor. You hooked up with him.”

I feel exposed. Heat colors my cheeks and I wish I could sink into the floor. CC stops shuffling the cards and it goes quiet. I’ve been quiet for way too long which makes me seem guilty as sin.

“Myra!” CC says, getting all the confirmation she needs. “It’s true!”

“I–

I sound just as awkward as the twenty-six year old virgin I was back then.

“Well…” CC says, struggling through a response herself. Maybe a part of her hoped it wasn’t true.

She goes through about fifteen emotions at once.

“It was Michael’s fault,” she says confidently. “I’m sure he pounced on you like a big… oh my God… I am such an idiot.”

“You were a kid. How were you supposed to know?”

But I can feel something painful knotting in my chest from recalling that part of my life. I buried everything that happened between me and Michael Corsini for a reason – and I don’t want it to come out now with CC and her tarot cards.

It’s too much for me to handle, especially because I can’t back away from Michael now in the same way I could before. I’ll be bound to this dangerous man… forever.