Page 107 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia Don

Summers coming up off the ground flashes behind my eyelids again, and in a stupidly brave and last-ditch effort, I reel up and headbutt Thaddeus square on the forehead, with all the strength I have. He staggers backward. We’re both dazed, but I have an advantage, something that gets me oriented and on my feet quicker: I’m not just trying to savemyself. Thaddeus sprawls between me and the door. I grab my phone and the knife Nico got me for my birthday, still sitting in its pretty display box.

Before Thaddeus is back on his feet, I cut through the window screen and push out into the night, dropping onto the ground outside. I run on blind instincts I have never had to use before. I’ve never had tosurvive. My window lets me out into the backyard, where confused and staggered, I run through the dark, deeper into the backyard and the twisting gardens where Thaddeus might not be able to follow.

Maybe he’ll go to Salvatore and Marcel. Maybe he’ll spin some wild tale. Or maybe he’ll come after me, a shadow in the dark. I don’t know. Marcel is still wounded, and Salvatore—what if he makes me get rid of it, too? What if he agrees with Thaddeus?

I hunch behind the hedges and open my phone, scrolling frantically though the settings, my fingers shaking so hard, I canbarely navigate the buttons under my fingertips. I am finally listening to my instincts, to that feeling that has been nettling me all along, the certainty I have felt in my bones.

I swipe across my phone’s settings, dragging the lock free:Unblock.

32

Nico

I am supposed to be 800 miles away. I barely made it eight. Eight miles, eight hours, eight days—any measure of time or distance between me and Ava, I couldn’t do it. Fuck Chicago and fuck a life without her. If the family catches me in New York, then they catch me. Maybe she’ll be the one to turn me in. Maybe she’ll be the one to pull the trigger. I could make my peace with that; I just need them to bury me close enough to haunt her.

Larry Rossum collapses face down on cold concrete, courtesy of a close-range 9mm bullet that bounces around his skull and turns his brains into scrambled eggs. He was forty-nine years old. Twenty or so of those years were spent in loyal service to the family. His two sons work for us, too. I don’t know them, but if they get any ideas over this, maybe the graveyard will give the family a discount on a three-wide plot.

Rossum spent his last year in disloyal service to the family, or at least disloyal to Sal, peddling money and favors behind his back and trying to push me to the head of the food chain along with the rest of them. That’s the risk you take when you decide to become a snake handler. Sometimes, the snake twists back and strikes the wrong way.

It’s not business, but it doesn’t feel personal either. It’s just cleaning up the wilds. One predator taking out its competition. We’re in thelast-ditch effortstage of things now. Men like Rossum will do anything to put me in power, and I know that means cutting through Ava St. Clair to get me there. It’s what I would do.

One down, six members of my own family to go.

I wish I was a real certified psychopath. The kind they make those overdone documentaries about. Men who chop up people in the backwoods, hiding bodies under the floorboards or cooking somebody up and serving them at the neighborhood bake sale. One of those people who just don’t feel anything about it. But some people just get all the luck.

I pocket the gun and keep moving.

I’ve spent my last days living out of musty hotels, stomping out the embers I sparked before they can catch fire. Even if I went to Chicago, I wouldn’t last long there with these men on my heels. Salvatore isn’t the only one gunning for my life now. I’m just running out the last of my time, trying to steal whatever glances of Ava that I can, and take out the men that might cause problems for her before one of them catches up to me first.

Angel says Marcel’s recovering. He’s going to make it, the crazy bastard, and if rumors are true, he’s already back home. I shouldn’t be relieved to hear it, but I am. For her. I never doubted that Marcel was good for the position that he holds. He’s annoyingly talented and a good asset—and I still underestimated him when I tried to go toe to toe with him. I can win a knockdown, drag-out bareknuckle fight, but put me on a chessboard with a man like him, and I lose every time.

I’m almost back at my car when I get the call. My first instinct says Salvatore, like he’s omniscient and already wondering why I just shot his government-employed Chief Investment Risk Officer through the ear. Guess I could start with the fact that he clearly wasn’t that good at his job—

Ava.

Her name on the screen stops me in my tracks.

She’s never called me before, and I don’t know why she would now. Could be a trap. They could use her number to track my cellphone and make sure I’m really out of the city. Salvatore has the kind of connections that would do that for him, but it doesn’t matter if it’s a trap or not. There’s a chance Ava is on the other end of the line, and that’s all it takes.

I answer, but I don’t know what to say. What the hell can I say?I didn’t do itcomes to mind, but it’s not even technically the truth. I did it. I just didn’t want to. A soft, panicked breathing and muffled rustling fills the speaker.

“…Nico?” Ava asks, out of breath, whispery,afraid.

Her tone makes my hair bristle like a static charge. I am running to my car before my name is fully off her lips,discretionbe damned.

“What’s wrong?” I demand, throwing open the door.

“Nico—”

She chokes back half a sob.

“Talk to me, baby,” I say over the roar of the engine starting up.

“It’s Thaddeus, he’s trying to—he attacked me, Nico, I don’t know what to do.”

“Where are you?”

“The house. I made it into the backyard, but he knows—Nico, where are you? Are you in Chicago?”

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