Twisted Bonds (The Camorra Chronicles 4)

Remo opened the door all the way, moving past me and giving Jerry a good view of the bloody mess inside the room. Jerry quickly backed away, turning pale despite years of working for us.

“Don’t piss your pants,” Remo muttered. “We’ll handle it.”

Jerry headed back into the bar while Remo and I made our way toward the backdoor. “If we find kittens or puppies, don’t mention anything to Kiara. She’ll insist we’ll keep them. I don’t want our house to be turned into a fucking zoo.”

We stopped in front of the dumpsters and listened.

“I don’t hear anything,” I said.

Remo narrowed his eyes at the dumpsters. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they suffocated in there by now. It’s warm and stuffy.” With a sigh, he stepped up to one dumpster and I climbed the steps of the other. Most of the trash was in black plastic bags but for some bottles and food scraps had been just dumped inside.

“Fuck,” Remo gritted out as he shifted a garbage bag to the side. “How come I rule over the fucking West and still have to get rotten tomatoes all over my hands?”

I opened my mouth for a reply, shoving a bag away when a small, human foot caught my attention. For a moment I froze, not sure if my mind was playing tricks on me, then I sprang into action. I tore away another bag, throwing it behind myself.

“Remo!”

I grabbed the baby, which lay unmoving amongst the trash. It was only dressed in dirty underpants. Pressing the little body against my chest, I jumped down the steps and knelt down on the ground. Remo was already there. “Fuck! Is it breathing?”

I shook my head as I pushed my finger into the baby’s mouth cleaning it from possible objects that could get into its airways once I started CPR.

Remo was snarling into the phone, “We need you to come over right this fucking second. We found a baby in the trash. It’s not breathing.”

I cradled the baby in my hands and carefully blew air into the small body. Luckily the baby responded quickly. If it had still been making sounds not too long ago, it hadn’t been without air for very long.

When its small chest began moving and it started breathing on its own, I turned to Remo who was staring down at me with a mix of murderous fury and blatant worry. “I need cold towels and someone needs to get formula ASAP.”

Remo turned and headed back inside. I got the baby out of the dirty pants, seeing it was a little boy, then straightened with him in my arm. I was on my way into our office when Remo came hurrying back, holding towels. I took one from him then headed inside the room, put the little boy down on the sofa and began wiping him with the cold fabric.

“He’s overheated, dehydrated and malnourished. We need to take him to the hospital. Our own doctors don’t have the necessary expertise.”

Remo gave a terse nod. “All right. I’ll take him and make sure the doctors and nurses do their job, and keep their noses out of our fucking business and after that I’ll have a talk with the boy’s mother.”

Only one whore had been pregnant in the last year—Lee. When she’d returned, Lee told us she’d given her child up for adoption. She’d started working again to pay for her heroine addiction.

I said, “I can take him to the hospital.”

Remo touched my shoulder looking from the baby up to my face. “You are going home and talking to Kiara.”

I stared down at the little boy in my arms, realizing what Remo was saying without actually saying it. I nodded slowly and handed him to Remo, who held him carefully against his chest.

“I’ll wait for you in the hospital and make sure he’s protected.”

With a last glance at the dirty baby in Remo’s arm, I turned and hurried back home.

CHAPTER 22

KIARA

I hummed as I cooked a batch of vegetarian sweet potato chili for tomorrow and didn’t turn when the door swung open behind me. To think that in the past I would have tensed, fearing the worst, it made me smile at how far I’d come.

Arms came around me and Nino kissed my throat, then my cheek. I turned in his embrace to peer up at him. Something in his expression, a flicker of hesitance, made me put the spoon down and turn to him fully. Had something happened to Adamo? He’d been doing better, right? Or had it just been pretense?

“What’s wrong?”

“One of the whores got pregnant and when Remo found out, he forbade her from working. She returned a couple of weeks ago, telling everyone she’d given the baby up for adoption. Today Jerry heard mewling coming from the trash. He thought a cat had given birth to kittens in the dumpsters…”