Page 6 of Forbidden Pregnancy (The Buffalo Italian Mob Family #2)

Chapter Three

Myra

B elladonna’s bartender’s chipper demeanor instantly makes me feel like a huge downer. She’s at the back of the bar mixing something with champagne and lime before she turns to me with an inquisitive look for me to place my order.

“The strongest hard liquor available, ma’am. Thank you.”

“Uh oh. Is everything okay?”

“Do I look that bad?”

“No, but you don’t look like my regular hard liquor drinker. You seem like a rosé type of woman.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“It is a compliment. Also… please leak your skin care routine. What’s your name?”

“Myra.”

Rachel nods. “It means beloved in Sanskrit. Pretty name.”

I don’t know how she knows that, but I’m in no place to question her mystical bartender’s knowledge.

Rachel looks like she can make a mean drink.

With less than a minute of picking liquor and shaking shots, she slides a drink across the bar.

“It’s a gin and tonic with a twist. I call it the problem solver. ”

“Really?”

“Nope. But trust me, all your problems will go away after one or two of these, depending on how strong your stomach is.”

“My stomach isn’t the strongest, honestly.”

My stomach has grown even weaker since the situation at the fertility clinic.

“Say goodbye to your problems, Myra.”

The stinging scent of gin burns my nostrils before I even lift the highball glass. If I can smell the cocktail from this far away, I know my girl Rachel has my best interests at heart. This drink will get me drunk.

Halfway through the gin and tonic, my boundaries are gone. I tell Rachel all my damn business and run up a tab for the next three cocktails. My stomach is a lot stronger than I thought, because I don’t feel too drunk to function or make sensible choices. I feel drunk with control.

“And the other thing is… I’m only here because all the guys I thought I would end up with have broken my heart.”

“Ugh, was he Puerto Rican?” Rachel says. “My last three Puerto Rican ex-boyfriends had girls on the side. Fucking ridiculous. I thought Hispanic men were family-oriented, you know?”

“No. Not Puerto Rican. Worse. He was in the mob.”

Rachel laughs. “Shit. The mob? He wasn’t a Taviani, was he? Because Luigi just got married to a black woman.”

“No, his last name was Corsini.”

Shame courses through me and it’s hot enough to burn my clothes off. I haven’t said the name “Corsini” out loud in years. I haven’t wanted to. He was supposed to be my forever person, but I’ve never had a relationship that was so much of a fucking roller coaster before.

Corsini. I tutored his sister for SAT prep while putting myself through business school. I didn’t think much of the fact that her older brother sat through every lesson, watching me. I did what any woman would… I fell for him. Hard. Too hard.

I swear, the strangest coincidence happens once I tell Rachel his name.

“Oh my God… MYRA brENT?!”

I turn around and standing at the entrance of Belladonna’s is a face I haven’t seen in years.

It must be either eleven or twelve. She’s not a little girl anymore, but I recognize her instantly.

My stomach lurches. Holy shit. Am I old?

! I haven’t tutored anyone in years – I learned my lesson after the Corsini family – but she was always one of my favorite students.

I always wondered how she ended up.

“Do you remember me?”

I stand up. Slightly tipsy, but fully aware.

“Of course I remember you.”

She races over to me and has her arms around me in seconds.

I hug her back, feeling Cosima’s bones pressing into my soft flesh as I hold her close.

She’s still so tiny, even if she’s much older now.

Cosima Corsini. She was a little firecracker.

She used the ‘F’ word. That little white girl was one of those women born wild.

Even now, her hair is dyed scarlet in a shaggy, shoulder length trendy grunge haircut.

Thick black eyeliner rims her eyes, which I always thought were so damned cute.

“You don’t look a day older!” Cosima says excitedly. “I can’t believe I’m running into you tonight. Michael thinks I’m still at his stupid apartment, but I climbed down the fire escape.”

Michael. I’m drunk enough that my stomach does a backflip when I hear his name. Cosima recognizes the fear on my face.

“Don’t worry, he isn’t here tonight.”

Good.

“He’s a fucking asshole,” she says. “I always used to wish he was dating you instead of literally any of those girls he would bring around.”

“Your brother wouldn’t be caught dead with a woman like me.”

Cosima rolls her eyes. “What? A hot, curvy woman smarter and better than him in every way?”

“You don’t have to flatter me.”

“I don’t want to! Let’s catch up. Rachel, can you get me a vodka cran?”

“Sure thing, CC.”

I don’t know what the hell brought me to this side of town, but maybe it’s a good thing that I ran into my old pupil.

There’s more to life than having kids of your own, right?

There are plenty of kids out there who need love, support, help and human kindness.

You don’t have to be a biological mother to take part in raising kind-hearted and resilient children.

CC sips her vodka cran while I get a toe-hold on sobriety. I’m just tipsy.

“Are you seeing someone now?” CC asks. “Because if it makes you feel any better, Michael is still single. I hate how he treated you when he worked for us. Such an asshole.”

She was just a kid. She had no idea what happened between me and her brother – or how complicated it was.

“Not seeing anyone. Just had some bad news about my prospects today, too.”

My emotions are too raw for me to get into the details with Cosima. Michael might be single, but he’s had enough time to have at least two divorces and a handful of kids by now. He won’t have to die completely alone.

“What did the last guy do to screw up?” Cosima asks, wide-eyed and genuine. “I can ask my other brother Peter to step in and break his shins if necessary.”

Once she sees the disturbed expression on my face, Cosima pulls me in close for another hug and pokes my sides, assuring me that she was only kidding around.

I don’t know if I believe her, but I laugh because Cosima always had that dark sense of humor, even as a little girl.

Her brother and everyone in her family seemed to want to suppress the parts of Cosima that made her fascinating and different.

I wonder if she still loves drawing and doodling the way she did as a kid.

CC wraps her arms around me and I return the hug, oddly comforted by her presence. “Tell me who hurt you, and I swear, I’ll end them.”

“You may look all grown up, Cosima, but trust me, this is not your problem. I’m just happy to see you grew up to become such a vibrant young lady.”

“Vibrant!” CC says, finding the adjective hilarious. “That’s a good way of putting it. Michael calls me an annoying cunt.”

Hearing that he calls her an “annoying cunt” causes me to bristle. After so many years, you would think the man would learn how to treat his own flesh and blood.

Despite my frustration, I keep my response neutral. “Michael has always struggled with patience.”

I don’t want to call him an asshole, even if that’s what I really think about him. Did I really expect him to change? He was a dick when I last saw him, and now he’s still tormenting his sister.

Cosima wraps her arms around me. “Ugh, I’m sorry. If it makes you feel any better, you were the best teacher I ever had. Dad took me to Paris after you left because I was so depressed.”

“Did you love it?”

“No,” Cosima says honestly. “Italy is much better. But you made me want to love it, and I always thought about how nice you were.”

She nestles in closer to me before taking a little space and staring into the ice piled into her empty glass.

There’s a little pain on her face which she never bothered to show when she was a kid.

Of course she must have felt it. The men in her family treated her like nothing more than a nuisance.

Her father might have invested in her tutoring, but I never witnessed Michael treat her with a word of kindness in my presence.

It hurt me for years to leave them behind, but I put myself through grad school and became a professor at SUNY Buffalo.

I got lost in teaching introductory French, and fell in love with that emotional high you get giving a struggling student the breakthrough moment that changes their relationship towards French.

A lot of people might find what I do to be too stressful or not rewarding enough to make the work atmosphere worth dealing with, but I love my job.

This close to Canada, learning French can really help people in the job market too.

My dad was a Congolese immigrant in Montreal, and even if I never met him, my mother made sure I learned his native language and over the years, that language has built some of the strongest bonds in my life.

Hearing that Cosima felt such an impact from my teaching when I barely knew what I wanted out of life and kept making mistake after mistake makes me feel like I’m not a failure even if I won’t ever give my mother the grandchildren she wants so desperately.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you by leaving,” I tell her. “I know I should have stayed in touch but…”

“But my family is fucking crazy?” CC asks. “I don’t know what happened, but it must have been either dad or Michael screwing up.”

“Hey, we’re here now, right? Do you still live in Buffalo or are you just visiting?”

Cosima doesn’t answer. Her gaze fixes over my shoulder and the color saps out of her face.

A war begins within my body. Part of me wants to freeze in place but another part of me can’t help but follow Cosima’s gaze.

I look over her shoulder and see the monster from my past. The man who took my virginity.

Michael Corsini.

But he looks different – and worse, he looks pissed off.