My Husband Chose the Wrong Mafia Princess novel · Chapter 2 of 16

Chapter 2: Let It Burn

Nate holds Mara back from the flames, admits he lit them, blames her to the firefighters and leaves her in labor on the lawn, and she calls the one number she swore she never would.

I rolled off the bed and landed on my knees.

Smoke was already rolling along the ceiling.

I pulled my shirt over my mouth.

The heat hit my face from ten feet away.

The rosary was in that closet.

My mother's rosary.

The baby's crib, the little clothes, the yellow walls.

All of it was behind that door.

I crawled toward it.

I got my hand around the knob and screamed.

It was hot as a stove.

Then somebody grabbed me under the arms and hauled me backward.

"Are you crazy?" Nate said in my ear. "You want to die in here?"

He dragged me down the stairs.

My heels bumped every step.

He pulled me out the front door and across the wet lawn.

The whole back of the house was burning.

Flames came out of the nursery window and licked up over the roof.

The glass popped.

I heard it break like a champagne cork.

"My mother's rosary," I said. "Nate, the closet. It's in the closet."

I tried to run back.

He locked his arms around me from behind and held on.

I reached for the house with both hands.

"Let it go," he said.

He was calm.

He wasn't even breathing hard.

He smelled like gasoline.

I stopped fighting.

I turned my head and looked at him.

His sleeves were wet. His hands were wet.

"You did this," I said.

He put his mouth right next to my ear.

"I told you," he whispered. "You get nothing."

Across the street, lights were coming on.

The old lady opposite us stood on her porch in her robe with her phone up.

The Pattersons were filming from their driveway.

A black car idled at the curb with its engine running.

Gianna sat in the passenger seat.

She was eating something out of a paper bag.

She waved at me.

"You burned our baby's room," I said to Nate.

"Your baby," he said. "Gianna's having mine."

Something hot ran down the inside of my legs.

For one second I thought I'd wet myself.

Then the cramp hit.

It folded me in half.

Nate let go of me.

I dropped onto the grass on my hands and knees.

"Her water broke," somebody yelled. "Somebody call 911!"

Sirens were already coming.

A fire truck swung around the corner, then another.

Firefighters jumped down and ran hoses across my lawn.

One of them knelt next to me.

"Ma'am, are you hurt? Is anyone else inside?"

"No," I said. "No one."

Nate crouched down on my other side.

He put his hand on my back.

"She's not well," he said to the firefighter. "She's been talking crazy all night. I left for an hour and came back to this."

The firefighter looked from him to me.

"Did you see how it started, sir?"

Nate sighed.

He rubbed his face with those wet hands.

"She said if she couldn't keep the house, nobody could," he said. "I didn't think she meant it."

"That's a lie," I said. "He poured gas on the porch. Smell his hands."

Another contraction came.

I lost the rest of the sentence in a scream.

The firefighter backed away from both of us and waved at the ambulance.

Nate stood up and brushed off his jeans.

"I'll tell the police everything," he said, loud enough for the street. "I just can't be here right now. I can't watch this."

He walked to the black car.

Gianna opened the door for him.

He got in, and they drove away while my house burned.

The paramedics lifted me onto a stretcher.

The old lady ran across the street in her slippers and pushed my phone into my hand.

"You dropped this in the yard, honey."

"Thank you," I said.

She squeezed my fingers and whispered, "I saw him. I saw him out back."

Then a cop called her name, and she let go.

They loaded me into the ambulance.

The doors closed on the orange sky.

A paramedic with a gray ponytail took my blood pressure.

"Who do we call?" she asked. "Your husband's gone. You got family?"

Nate had asked me that on our first date.

I'd told him no.

No one.

I'd said my parents were dead and I didn't have people.

Only half of that was true.

The ambulance hit a pothole.

I cried out and gripped the rail.

"Honey, who do we call?"

My thumb was shaking.

I scrolled to a number I'd saved six years ago under the name Dad and never once dialed.

It rang once.

A man picked up.

Not my father.

A voice I knew better than my own.

"Mara?" he said. "Mara, is that you? Where are you?"

"Santino," I said. "Nate burned my house down. I'm having the baby."

The line went so quiet I thought it dropped.

Then I heard him stand up.

A chair scraped.

"Which hospital?" he said.

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