Page 109 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia Don

I interrupt her shocked, trembling rambling.

“You thought I wouldn’t want our baby?”

Her breath just hitches in response.

“Ava,” I whisper, my voice half steel as I put my hands around her waist. “Why the fuck—why would I ever not wantour baby?”

“Because I heard you. I heard you with Sal. You said kids weren’t in your future, that you were never going to have any, that you weren’t even going to marry, so…”

The words cut me deeper and more devastatingly than anything she could have done to Thaddeus.

“I told Sal I didn’t want kids because I didn’t want them with whatever woman he was going to try to pawn me off to! I want kids, Ava! I want kids so goddamn badly. I just only want them with you.”

The dogs in the backyard go wild. The lights in the house have all turned on after the gunshots and the clamor from the gates. Voices get closer as flashlights sweep near the edges of the house, coming this way.

I realize, staring up into Ava’s stunned face—I’m not going to get to have kids with her. Not even this one, the one already in her belly. I’m a dead man. The rush of emotion, all frustration and rage, swells up as I pull Ava to me, kissing her belly and resting my head against it for a moment, indulging for just one second in everything that maybe could have been.

How long has she known? How long has she just been dealing with it, alone and terrified?

I sweep her up, kissing her desperately, deeply, in case this is the last time. The way I should have kissed her from that first night.

“I love you. Ava, I love you, and the baby. If I’m not there—”

“Nico, don’t—”

“If I’m not there,” I repeat firmly, taking her face in my hands and forcing her to listen, “you love them for the both of us, okay? And be patient with them, because they’re half me, and God knows they’re going to get into a lot of really stupid shit.”

“Nico, I can’t do this without you, please don’t,” she begs me, desperately. The chaos inches closer. I drag her back into the shadows behind the fountain.

“Bullshit, Ava. You’re already fighting for this baby, and you’re going to keep fighting. You’re going to be just fine. Give me the knife. Give me the knife, baby girl, and wash the blood off in the fountain. Hurry.”

“What? Why?” she sobs.

When she’s too paralyzed to hand it to me, I pry the knife from her hands and look them over. Her palms are mostly clean, a few nicks and cuts, but I doubt enough for anyone to suspect anything.

“Because you didn’t do this. You didn’t kill him.”

She watches, mortified, as I cut the little telltale notches of self-defense wounds into my hands.

“Stop! What are you doing?”

“I’m taking the fall for this. Not you.”

“He attacked me,” she argues. “He was going to kill me, or the baby, or, I don’t know, whatever he was going to do! He was drunk and he deserved it, Nico! You don’t have to do this, please stop,” she begs, putting her hands on mine, trying to get in my way.

“I know what he deserves, and when I get to hell with him, I’m going to give him the rest of it.” But until I get there, I have to protect her. Protectbothof them. “I started this goddamn feudbetween my family and you and your brother. And now you just killed one of their side. Do you understand? Salvatore and Marcel, of course they won’t blame you.” Pain blossoms across my palm and flowers into blood as I drag the blade across it. “But everyone else, they need to blame me.”

Ava pushes into my arms again. She holds me tight, like I’m taking the whole world away from her. She cries so hard it cuts deep in my core. I try to soothe her, put my hands on her—her hair, her face, her body—holding her while smearing blood in my wake, until nobody will know what might’ve bled from me and what might’ve bled from him.

I kiss the top of her head.

“Nico,” Salvatore calls out, gun at his side. Wavering flashlight beams fall over us and linger on the body just a couple steps away. The sand in the hourglass trickles down to the last grains.

Fuck.

I kiss Ava again, desperately.

“I love you,” I say, the same little phrase I have been texting her every day since I left, watching the message fail to send again and again. “I love both of you.” She doesn’t let go, making it so much harder than it has to be, her fingers curled into my shirt.

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