Page 17 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia Don

“How many times have you been to the ring?” I ask, cutting him off.

“That doesn’t matter.”

“How many times, Marcel?”

“Ava, that’s not the point.”

“It is the point! Because you’re a grown man, and you can go wherever you want and do whatever you like, and nobody can hold you accountable for that. So why can’t I?”

“Ava, you are not in the headspace to be making those kinds of choices.”

“Don’t talk to me like a psychiatrist. You’re not. Would you rather I go back into my room for a few more months? Bed rot the time away, so at least you know where I am?”

The silence hangs in the air.

He can’t even say no.

“Fine,” I whisper, furious and hurt. I whip around to do just that.

“Ava,” he says urgently. His tone locks my feet in place, cracks another piece of my heart off just a little. Marcel has Nico breathing down his neck, and all he’s worried about isme. A part of me wishes he would just scream at me. Maybe it would be better for all of us if he did.

“You asked for more responsibility within the family. We gave that to you. Can that just be enough, for now? I don’t know what tomorrow is going to look like. Right now, I have too much to worry about without worrying about you, too. Let me put out one fire at a time, but I promise—I’ll try to make this all better for you. Somehow.”

I hold my silence.

Being a nanny wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted a distraction. Something to get me away from everything I’d lost. Instead, I was given the responsibility of helping take care of Salvatore’s new daughter. Every day, I hold in my arms the kind of happiness I will never have myself. Every day for a month now, I have sat on the sidelines of someone else’s fairytale ending, watching the love between Salvatore and his wife play out right before my eyes.

Marcel shouldn’t make promises he can’t keep.

The family can’t help me. They’re good at killing, but I’ve never seen them resurrect anybody.

Still, I look into his tired face and nod. I can behave. For him. Fornow.

His hand ruffles through my hair, his thumb scrubbing against my lip with a sigh.

“Did he really save you?” Marcel asks.

“He did.”

Finally, I sit down and recount the tale, from Nico’s sudden appearance at the ring to the two of us going out and getting a late-night meal. I omit a few parts that might send Marcel on the warpath. In this version of the story, my phone disappeared in the chaos at the fighting ring, dropped out of my pocket. Nico staged holding me at gunpoint to get inside. All those critical moments of being pinned under Nico’s touch, being strung along in his “debt,” burning up in his gaze as if I am something he wants to devour—I leave those out. In my own way, this ishow I protect Marcel. I don’t need to give him any reason to go hunt Nico down and make this even worse.

“I don’t know what the future will look like for us, Ava,” he sighs. “I don’t even know if we’ll be living here. If it will be safe for you.”

The office door opens again, interrupting us.

Salvatore looks tired, and I don’t think it has anything to do with the late hour. He and Marcel give each other one of those looks that hold a newspaper’s worth of words, all bold, disastrous headlines.

“Nothing will happen toeitherof you,” Salvatore says, sure of himself. “He’ll compromise.”

Marcel frowns. “I know it’s been a while since we’ve dealt with him, but have you forgotten how Nico is? He doesn’tcompromise.”

“Neither do I, and he’ll break first if he knows what’s good for him. We won’t give him another option.”

My brother doesn’t look convinced. He tells me I should get some sleep, but Salvatore’s voice calls out instead. “Wait,” he orders.

I freeze in place. Salvatore Mori has never needed anything from me before. The don gestures to the chair across from him. Marcel looks as confused as I feel as I march toward the seat and sit, face to face, with the leader of the family.

“Did you know he was going to be there, Ava?” he asks, so straightforward it catches me off guard. I’ve never been suspected of anything before, but I realize how it must seem. Of all the nights that I slip off to the fighting ring, it’s the one where Nico mysteriously appears there, and we come back to the house together as if we’re old friends.

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