Page 110 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia Don

“No,” she sobs, broken-hearted. “Don’t go. Please don’t. I love you, too. Ican’t—”

“Yes, you can,” I interrupt.

Salvatore and the men from the gate approach, pistols and rifles aimed our way. I dropped my gun somewhere in the yard around us, not that it would help even if I had it. Not against this.

“What the hell did you do now? You can’t be fucking serious!”

Christ, Salvatore almost sounds like our father these days, if he was just a little more pissed off. He’s still half-bewildered. The man who probably thinks the lowest of me, even he doesn’t understand why I would waste my so-called last chance like this, not even trying to get away with it. We both stare at Thaddeus’s spindly, limp legs as he waits for me to answer.

“I did what I always do, Sal.”

Salvatore’s wrath lashes out like a whip.

“I gave you every chance! More than I would have given anyone else—even those who deserved it more than you. I allowed you to live once, by my wife’s sheer grace. And this is what you do with it? Has it even been a week, Nico?”

I hold my silence, let him rail on about what I’ve supposedly done. I always smile in those moments when you’re not supposed to. Just can’t help myself. And I smile now, grinning in the face of his outage as Salvatore storms up to us.

“Marcel was right. Maybe I couldn’t see it, but you really are a stupid, suicidal bastard.”

Actually, I’m in love, but I don’t know if there’s a difference.

My grin fades when Ava wedges herself between the two of us—just like always, trying to be the barrier between me and all the consequences that I’ve been dodging since I got out.

“Don’t you dare point those fucking guns at her,” I snap at him, trying to get Ava out of the way. “Ava,move.”

“No,” she seethes, staring down Sal and digging her feet in against the ground when I try to pull her aside. “He was protecting me! He didn’t do anything wrong—I called him here! I made him come here, and he saved me!”

Marcel rounds the corner a minute late, slow to catch up. Usually, he’s nipping on Sal’s heels, but tonight the loyal lapdog walks gingerly—until Ava screams for him. The sight of her out here in the middle of this chaos makes him forget his stitches, and Marcel comes jogging straight to Sal’s side.

“What happened?” he asks, reaching out for his bloodstained sister.

“What do you think?” Sal mutters darkly, nodding toward the fountain. Someone has dragged Thaddeus out of the pool and left the limp body on the ground. His empty eyes stare up at the sky, his lips blue and skin already faded to that sickly, signature gray of the newly dead. His white undershirt has turned a washed-out, transparent pink, and through the sheerness, he must have over a dozen stab wounds poked into his chest, the wet shirt sucked deep into the wounds.

“Marcel,please,” Ava begs, but she doesn’t find any sympathy in his expression. The half-circle of gunmen closes in, ready to drag us apart at Salvatore’s command. “Thaddeus attacked me,” she sniffles. “He did, I swear—someone must have heard something,they’ll tell you—Nico was just protecting me.” She can barely speak through her breathlessness, trying so hard to convince him through her tears.

Marcel looks over Ava carefully. He tilts her face, looking at the blue bruises starting to ring around her eye and swell in her jaw. “Thaddeus did this?”

“Yes.”

His gaze slides to the body.

“Well, it looks like he’s already been handled. Good. That only leaves one more.”

All Salvatore has to do is nod. It’s not even an order.

Hands tighten on my arms and curl into my shirt as Salvatore’s men haul me away. Marcel and Sal pry Ava off. They pull us apart, but just like that first night, Ava keeps fighting. She drags her tiny weight against the two men that tower over her, trying uselessly to pull away and get back to me. She screams like she’s the one dying. Tonight, I’m the one who doesn’t fight it. I’m dragged under my arms and forced to my knees in the grass.

Ava wails as Salvatore steps my way, while her brother hauls her back around the waist.

No more trials. No more deals.

“Marcus Taylor, Zachary Mori, Allan Mori, and Elias White,” I say to Salvatore, forcing the names out rapid-fire before Salvatore’s bullet can interrupt me. “Those are the men that you’re going to have to finish off after you’re done with me. LarryRossum and Harry Mori, I’ve already taken care of. Rossum, you’ll probably hear about him by morning, but Harry’s in his apartment, and nobody lives with him. You’ll have to send somebody out.”

Salvatore’s silence is a loud question he doesn’t want to ask as he stares me down.

“You think I’m going to spare you because you’re giving up your co-conspirators?”

“I know you’re not. But you need to clean house once I’m gone.”

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