Page 104 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia Don

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Ava

It’s at the end of another long day when, late into the evening, Marcel’s hand curls around mine and gives it a squeeze. I wake from a daze, bolting back to reality. Marcel’s eyes are open for the first time since he was admitted to the hospital. He looks me up and down. Stabbed and freshly stitched from surgery, the first groggy thing Marcel asks is, “Are you alright?”

He’s answered by my frantic sobbing. It’s not a good first impression of the situation. I wrap my arms around him and refuse to let him go. He doesn’t complain even when I know he’s in pain, assuring me over and over that he’s alright, that everything is going to be fine now.

I’ve never felt a relief like this. A relief that hurts almost as much as the fear does, when you know just how close you came to disaster, that it makes you cry, too. I barely have the sense to call for a nurse and let them take over.

He’s strong enough to be moved to the second hospital recommended by the family, and soon we are in a nicer room that is furnished more like a private bedroom than a hospital room. Concerned about the possibility of secondary infection and charting the progress of his healing, the doctors want to keep him for another forty-eight hours for monitoring, and he has his own personally appointed nurse for round the clock care, and her sole attention is Marcel.

From what little bit of nursing school I survived, I know it’s quite a bit of overkill.

Either they’re being extra cautious with the second-in-command of the Mori family, or Salvatore has taken his best friend being stabbed quite personally and started signing checks and arranging for the best of the best care. No one suggests I abide by any visiting hours, and I’m allowed to stay with Marcel night and day. He’s the only one who complains about it.

When he isn’t working, Thaddeus drops in often. He is incredibly invested in Marcel getting better. I know why, we all do, but I tell myself it doesn’t matter what the reasons are. Not anymore. Like the rest of the family who come in and out, to check in and pay respects, he makes sure I’m fed and that I have everything I need.

It’s only when we’re alone, when things are finally calm and the sun is setting again, that I apologize to him for Nico. There’s a lot to apologize for. For ignoring Marcel’s warnings, and the way that I’ve been acting, and for not seeing the truth about what Nico was. Marcel brushes off my apologies like he always does, making excuses for me.

He says what happened between him and Nico had nothing to do with me.

It is the first time I’ve ever wondered if my brother is lying to me. The light slides down the wall, steeping the room in purpling shadows. If he’s lying, I know it’s to protect me, so that I don’t feel guilty about what happened to him. But I still wonder.

I’ve had a lot of time to sit here and think about Nico. I just don’t see how this could havenothingto do with me—unless the man really had me so fooled, all he ever wanted was to get Marcel out of the way. When I finally blocked his number, maybe he knew that chance was over. That there was only one way left for him to climb to the top, and it was over my brother’s body.

But then how is Marcel even here?

When Salvatore visited Marcel, right after he first woke up, he asked him. But Marcel said he couldn’t remember. He remembers going to Nico’s to meet up, that they needed to talk about the family—and then nothing. He suggests easing off the pain medication, if maybe that will make his head clearer, and I backed them both off from the topic immediately. Whatever happened in that apartment, it’s not worth Marcel suffering more than he already has.

I haven’t asked what happened to Nico. I am pretending, even to myself, that I don’t care. Maybe they killed him. Maybe he went on the run. It doesn’t matter, I tell myself, whenever he comes creeping back through my thoughts. I look at my brother, seeming too pale and too small in a hospital bed, and repeat:whatever happened to him, he deserved it.

Before the third day is out, Marcel convinces Thaddeus to take me home and take care of me. He’s been improving quickly, and he promises that he’ll soon be back home with the rest of us. There’s no need for me to sleep cramped up on a couch shoved into one side of the room.

I can’t argue with him, and finally, I go back home.

For a whole day, all I want to do is sleep. I nod off constantly, always feeling a little sick to my stomach and with no appetite to eat anything at all. This has all taken so much out of me.

I sleep deep and often, and in my dreams, I keep asking Nico why he did it. I scream at him, I push him, I try to hit him, but I can’t. The punches in my dreams are heavy and slow. I can’t do anything to him at all, and he just keeps standing there.

And no matter how many times I ask, he just keeps saying that he didn’t. Over and over. I can’t escape him. In my dreams, he’s always there, racing down the highway or stalking me through the streets. He’s in my every other thought.

Tessa says they sent Nico to Chicago, but they didn’t.

He’sright here.

In my head. In my belly.

I wake up and have to puke.

Marcel is back home by the end of the week. His pain needs to be managed and he can’t exert himself. That doesn’t stop him from trying, of course. Salvatore and I both feel stupid for letting him come home when we knew he wouldn’t rest if he was here.

I hate that I’m starting to see how alike we are, in little ways. How can two people raised in organized crime be so bad at following orders? But slowly, life goes back to normal. Everything is fine again. I am investing in frumpy sweaters and waking up early to creep out of my bedroom to throw up. I am well over three months pregnant now, and when I stand in the mirror and look at my profile, I can see the distinct swell of my belly. Through all the stress and exhaustion and turmoil, the little thing held on. They’re a fighter, just like their—

My thoughts jerk like a car swerving around a deer, nearly rolling into a ditch with how violently I avoid it. I have to remind myself, in that moment of weakness: they don’t have a father. I might as well be carrying the next coming of Christ for how little of a father this baby is going to have.

The slightest fond thought of Nico, and the tears start coming—which means I do a lot of crying these days. Between the hormones and the drama and the devastating situation I have put myself in, I imagine the family might just find me one day lying in a puddle, drowned on land in my own tears.

My bedroom is once again a tiny torture chamber. With Thaddeus next to me, I lie in the dark, looking around at Nico’s handiwork and the second life he gave me, and try to see the selfishness in it. Vinny’s things are still safely tucked away in the closet, now as much associated with Nico as they are with Vinny. I look around at all this, and I don’t see the man that would stab my brother in the dead of night.

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