Page 113 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia Don

But the doctor frowns over my blood pressure and says that if I carry these numbers into my third trimester, I am at risk of serious complications for me and the baby. (And there is nothing that will spike your blood pressure faster than being scolded for having high blood pressure just an hour after being in a kill-or-be-killed scenario—of course I have high blood pressure, I want to scream.I am lucky to have blood pressure at all!)

But something about those words has made Nico go very still, body tense and face pale.

“Pre-eclampsia?” he asks.

My six foot five cage fighter pulls the wordpre-eclampsiaout of the air like performing a magic trick. I look at him as though he’s just transformed into a different person. Nico knows the names of cars, and guns, and men on most-wanted lists. Why he has this of all things in his vocabulary makes me double take, unless he went to some night classes I don’t know about, until I remember why I have never met his mother. My heart sinks.

The doctor hums.

“We would need to see if these numbers remain high in the long term, but it is a complication that could develop at this rate, and something we need to keep a close eye on.”

Nico’s expression remains closed off for the rest of the examination, even to me, while his grip stays steady and sure on my hand. Cold gel is wiped from my belly, and one by one, the monitors unhook. I am discharged with strong orders for “bed rest and ‘taking it easy.’”

I change into my clothes, the air in the room tense.

“Ava,” Nico says suddenly, his voice ragged. I turn around and Nico steps close, his huge hand sprawling over my belly and spreading his warmth into me as I’m so cold in this room. “You don’t have to worry about anything, Ava. Nothing.” He drops to his knees in front of me. “I swear on my life, no one isevergoing to touch you again. You’re going to be taken care of day and night. Anything you want in the world, baby girl, you point and ask. It’s yours. I’m going to love you until you’re sick of love.”

I smile, my heart clenching hard.

I know he’s rattled, maybe even afraid, but he won’t show it. Not when I need him to be strong.

I gaze down at him and poke a finger gently against his chest. “I want that.”

His smile is pained, his eyes glossy.

“You’ve had that for a long time now.”

Gently, Nico sweeps me up into his arms, and says we’re going home.

“Nico, I can stillwalk,” I laugh, but he won’t hear it. He won’t even put me in a wheelchair. He carries me like a princess out of the hospital, ignoring the entire world that stares at us along the way, as if the only world that matters is already right there in his arms.

We drive home, and Nico obeys the speed limit every mile, asking me a dozen different questions: have I been to the doctor? Am I eating well, and the things I’m supposed to eat? Have I bought anything for the baby? Just as I start to feel guilty that some of those answers aren’t what they should be, his hand closes over mine and he says, “Good. You still left me some things to take care of.”

The shock of killing a man hasn’t really set in yet. Or maybe this is the shock. I don’t know. I haven’t really processed much about it yet, but I know it isn’t grief I will be feeling when I finally do feel something. For now, killing Thaddeus is just a dull ache in my upper arm, after I plunged the wordswith loveinto his chest dozens of times.

We pass back through the demolished gates and weave around the wreckage Nico left in his wake.

“Your poor car,” I sigh.

The custom one-of-one still sits, ruined, at the edge of the house. Someone has turned the engine off.

“The car was worthless,” Nico says, drawing my confused gaze. “Nowhere to put a car seat in that thing.”

It gets me crying all over again.

Marcel greets me when we make it back, anxiously asking over my health. We hug tightly and I thank him, over and over, for sparing Nico. He doesn’t answer, but he rubs my back and assures me that he isn’t angry with me. Even Salvatore, who has barely so much as touched me before, hugs me now. I realize, suddenly, that I amfamily. There is soon to be a direct blood link between me and him.

In all this chaos, I hadn’t thought to ask Nico about his rivalry with Marcel. About his position in the family. About the men he owes. After a long bath, while cleaning the blood out from under my nails, I finally dare to ask him,

“Nico. What about your position in the family? Aren’t you—”

I can’t even finish the question before he shrugs it off.

“The only position I want in this family is as your husband and the father of your kids.”

34

Nico

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