Page 20 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia Don

I stare out into the black shadows. Something moves down at the opposite end of the hallway, where Nico disappears into the rest of the house. I sigh under my breath, slam the door shut, and twist the lock.

It doesn’t help.

All night, I roll on my mattress. I twist and turn through the last few hours of darkness, certain I hear something just there on the other side of that door. Something watching, waiting, scratching to be let in. Something that won’t be scared off by a lock. By an angry older brother. By the wordno.

6

Nico

In the old dining hall, the Mori blood family gathers around an antique table. Noontime sun tints the windows white, breathes some life into the room. It’s a quick turnaround time. I thought Salvatore would push this meeting off for as long as possible, late into the evening, as he scrambled to make a counterplay and get to the root of my release.

The way I see it, there’s one of two options. Either Sal meant it when he said he wasn’t going to fight me—no chance—or he already has something up his sleeve. Some left hook that’s going to come out of the dark. I pace restlessly as everyone else files in. I can’t be still, suspicion running quick through my blood, fueling me past the sleeplessness weighing down my limbs.

I haven’t dealt with Sal as a don before, and I have a feeling underestimating him would be a dangerous mistake.

I’m greeted with handshakes and nods of respect as the family joins around the table. Some eyes regard me warmly,knowing. Others have tight-lipped smiles of uncertainty, their respect going only as far as it has to. Some, I hardly even know who they are, and that makes me uneasy. The kids have grown up while I’ve been gone.

Everyone takes a seat, finds their proper place among the ranks. Not me. I pace, restless and waiting.

Someone is wheeled into the room in a wheelchair, and I double-take, nearly jumping out of my skin at the sight.

“Jesusfuck,” I snap as the withered old woman looks up at me from her seat. Cecilia Mori regards me, tight-lipped, looking like some living taxidermy project. Everyone said she was on her deathbed when I last saw the old crow, and that was over half a decade ago.

“I thought you weredead. Hell, I’m not sure you aren’t.”

“It’s a pleasant surprise to see you too, Nico,” she says, holding out a hand that could feature in an anatomy book. We shake, and I feel those brittle, bird-like bones under my palm. The slightest pressure and I think she’d crumble into dust. The old bitch is my great-aunt and the closest thing I ever had to a mother after mine died.

My father raised me—but he raised me into a don. A mafia man.

The woman in that chair is the one who raised the kid.

A handshake doesn’t feel like enough, but goddamn, I don’t know if she’d survive anything else. A hug might put her inthe grave. Looking at her too long makes my skin crawl. It’s uncomfortable on some deep instinctual level. She’s too close to a corpse. You can’t look at her without being reminded of death, like he’s standing right there over her shoulder.

She’s wheeled up to her place at the table and her attendee shrinks back to a corner of the room.

When Salvatore enters, the room falls into a hush. Everyone stands. So much respect for a sheerpresence. It sets my teeth on edge. Behind him, Marcel really has the balls to step into this room with the rest of us.

I bite out an insulted laugh.

“One of these things is not like the others,” I say, singsong and low, prowling in the back of the room while everyone else stands at attention.“One of these things doesn’t belong.”

“Marcel will wait outside for now,” Salvatore says, interrupting my taunting, “but in a few minutes, I’m going to have him join us.” Salvatore sits, and the rest of the room follows suit. For me, he gestures to the seat at his right. The one Marcelwouldhave taken.

What the hell are they planning?

Salvatore opens up the meeting by welcoming me back. He makes half an effort to even sound like he means it.So generous. When we smile at each other, it’s with the pure certainty that neither of us would really mind if the other died.

“Nico has requested a meeting of the blood family,” Sal says, gesturing to the table. “I’ll let him speak his case.”

I lean back, glancing around the table and silently counting heads.

Like politics, most decisions in a family like this are already made before anybody sits down to vote. The outcome is already decided in some shady backroom where the power resides. But my case isn’t won just yet. I have a few friends here—men who know what they stand to gain from my control, who had better positions when I was in charge—but a few aren’t going to cut it.

“It’s not my case,” I say tersely. “It’sourcase.”

I gesture to the people sitting around the table. “When our father was don, being blood family meant everything. You all were the top dogs. Even when I was just a kid, I knew who ran things. I knew who you didn’t mouth off to, who you looked away from when you passed them in the hall. Because you had that kind of respect. Being family,real family, meant something. So what the fuck happened?” I ask, glancing around the table at the people sitting there.

“How did we get so many outsiders taking up roles that should be going to our own kin? Hell, do you even know who takes the reins if something happens to Sal? God forbid, of course.” I grin. “But the next descendant is in diapers and the right-hand man isn’t even one of our own. I’m requesting the family appoint me as the underboss, and we start putting things back in their rightful place, how they should have been all along.”

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