Bound to the Mob Alpha's Baby novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Alpha Clinic
Told he's carrying a pureblood's child, Mickey refuses the mob uncle's money to end it, locks him in the exam room and collapses in the lobby, where the Alpha from the roof carries him out, until the uncle calls him the locksmith's son.
The doctor said "six weeks," and then she said "pureblood" like it was a diagnosis.
Mickey Corcoran sat on the paper sheet in exam room four with his sweater pushed up to his ribs.
The screen showed a gray smudge with a tiny flicker in the middle.
"That can't be right," he said. "I'm a locksmith."
She didn't laugh.
"Male omegas carry, Mr. Corcoran. You know that."
"I know that. I didn't know I was doing it."
She pulled the neck of his sweater aside and touched his left shoulder.
The mark was still there.
He'd been calling it a bruise for six weeks.
It was a dark crescent, the size of a thumbprint, and it hadn't faded one shade.
"Where were you on September seventeenth?" she asked.
He didn't have to think.
The Blood Moon gala at the hotel on the lake.
He'd been the on-call locksmith for the jewelry room, with a badge on a lanyard and a mask somebody handed him at the door.
He had met a man on the roof.
Mickey never got his name, and the man never got his.
He was gone before Mickey woke up.
"Working," Mickey said.
"That's a blood moon mark." She tapped the screen. "The father is a pureblood Alpha. There is exactly one pureblood line in this city."
She picked up her phone and went out into the hall.
Through the door he heard her say, "Yes, sir. He's here now."
His phone buzzed on the chair.
Aoife, for the third time. "DID YOU PEE ON THE STICK OR NOT."
He didn't answer her.
He stared up at the ceiling tiles.
Ten minutes later the door opened and a silver-haired man walked in like he owned the building.
He probably did.
Navy suit, white pocket square, a heavy gold ring.
Behind him came Shawn.
Mickey's ex-boyfriend of two years, in the green bomber jacket Mickey had bought him.
"Hey, Mick," Shawn said.
The older man sat down on the doctor's stool and smiled at Mickey.
"Pietro Bianchi," he said.
Everybody on Milwaukee Avenue knew that name.
In August a company of his had bought the building Mickey's dad's shop sat in.
"You're in a bad spot, son," Pietro said. "I'm here to make it go away."
He set a thick envelope on the paper sheet beside Mickey's knee.
"Forty thousand dollars. And the eighteen thousand four hundred you owe me in rent, gone."
"For what?"
"You end it today." Pietro nodded at the counter. "The doctor's ready."
The doctor was filling a syringe.
She didn't look at Mickey.
"How did you even know I was here?"
Shawn shrugged.
"He asked me who the locksmith at the gala was," he said. "I told him."
"You told him I was pregnant?"
"I told him you'd been throwing up for a month and booked this place." Shawn smiled a little. "He pays better than your dad ever did."
He said it in front of all of them.
Like it was nothing.
Like they hadn't shared a bed for two years.
Mickey put his hand flat on his stomach.
"No," he said.
Pietro's smile didn't move.
"You don't understand what you're carrying. That child will get you killed. I'm offering you the easy way."
"I know the easy way," Mickey said. "It's called the door."
He slid off the table and pulled his sweater down.
The doctor's keys lay on the counter beside the syringe.
He picked them up on his way past, the way he picked up every key he saw.
Pietro laughed. "Where do you think you're going?"
"Bathroom. You want to hold my hand?"
He stepped into the hall and pulled the door shut behind him.
He'd noticed the lock when he came in.
They kept the drug fridge in room four, so the door had a deadbolt with a keyhole on both sides.
Fire code says you can't do that.
Somebody here didn't care.
Mickey turned the doctor's key, and the bolt slid home.
Then he took a blank off his own ring, pushed it into the keyway and snapped it off flush.
The handle rattled.
"Mickey," Shawn said through the door. "Open it."
"Call a locksmith," Mickey said.
He walked away with his heart going.
He made it to the lobby.
It was all glass walls and white tile, with a wolf's head over the desk and the word ALPHA in silver.
Halfway across, the floor tipped.
Heat climbed his neck and his mouth went sour.
Something warm ran over his lip.
He touched it and his fingers came away red.
The receptionist stood up and said something he couldn't hear.
His knees hit the tile.
Then the glass doors slammed open.
A tall man in a long black coat came through them fast.
Black hair over his forehead, a tattoo climbing the side of his neck.
Blood was running from his nose too.
He went down on one knee beside Mickey and got his arms under his back and his legs.
He lifted Mickey like he weighed nothing.
The sick heat drained out of Mickey all at once.
"Put me down," he said into the man's coat. "I don't get carried."
"You said that on the roof," the man said. "Right before you told me my cufflinks were fake."
Mickey knew that voice.
He'd heard it say his body was the best thing in the hotel.
He looked up.
The man's eyes were dark, and then they went gold.
"Who are you?" Mickey said.
"Vin Bianchi." He started walking. "I was on the Kennedy, ten minutes from O'Hare. I couldn't see the road. I told my driver to turn around."
"Bianchi," Mickey said.
"Yes."
"Your uncle's in exam room four with my ex and a syringe. He offered me forty grand to get rid of your baby."
Vin stopped in the middle of the lobby.
His arms went hard around Mickey.
"My baby," he said, very quietly.
Down the hall, wood cracked.
The door of room four banged against the wall.
Pietro walked out with his pocket square still perfect.
He looked at the two of them, and he smiled.
"Put him down, Vincenzo," he called across the lobby. "That's the locksmith's son."
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