Page 59 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia Don

I don’t know if I’m going to tell him. I don’t know if I’m going to tell anyone or everyone. My instincts pull in a hundred different directions: run to Nico and confess. Run to Cecilia and beg for help. Take my brand-new car and run across the country, evading everyone who ever knew me for the rest of my life.

All I’ve managed to do is pace around my room like an animal in a cage, fighting off tears and panic attacks and scolding myself over and over and over. You don’t get to flirt with danger andthen cry over the consequences. I wanted this. I wanted the worst of the worst, back against the wall, no coming back—

Ruin.

I didn’t make bad choices expectinggood outcomes, and there is a part of me that revels in the damage done, warming itself by the dazzling fire that is my future going up in flames.

When pacing my room becomes too tight, I start to walk up and down the dark hallways of the house. I peer through every passing window and out into the road. It’s late, and Nico still isn’t home. He hasn’t texted me, didn’t tease me through dinner with Thaddeus…

It’s not like him.

My hand skirts thoughtlessly over my belly as I wonder if he’s alright.

I camp out in his bedroom, waiting, counting the seconds between each minute, and the minutes between each hour. My panic is a low-grade fever, constant and just prevalent enough to be always on my mind, sneaking its way back into the forefront of my thoughts over and over.

I know what the easiest decision is. I could make this all quietly go away.

But looking around me, at this sprawling house and my cozy life, I know I have no right to act like Ican’tdo this. My hands aren’t tied. My choices weren’t oblivious. I knew every step of the way that I could end up here, sweating over this choice. I know why I did it.

But Nico—I have doubts about whyhedid it.

Every time I imagine Marcel finding out, I know exactly how he will see it. Nico wanted me trapped and desperate with his baby, wanted to ruin my arrangement with Thaddeus and Sal. This is Nico’s opening into the family.

I wander to Nico’s empty bedroom and sink down on the bed, breathing in the scent of him again. It twists up my heart. He’s been so good to me, even when all I wanted was to push him away and tell him to leave me alone. He never did. I thought maybe, somehow, Nico just knew that I needed him.

But what if I had it all backward? What if he neededme?

What if everything he did, he did only for himself?

I lie in the dark and wonder—did I play into Nico’s fantasy or into his game? I curl up, my arms tightening around my middle. Am I carrying the baby of a misunderstood man, or a manipulative murderer?

Can a man be both?

If I think about it too long, it makes me want to puke. I might have a lot of that in my future, though, and I don’t want to start now.

Contessa walks the floors tonight. Sometimes I hear her, or maybe Sal, their footsteps moving through the house above me over and over as Emma has a bad, sleepless night. She’s not the only one. I close my eyes and listen to the crying, imagining for a brief moment that it’smybaby. My eyes well up.

I press my hands over my face and wonder if I should just blurt it out when Nico walks through the door. Put the truth in his face and see how he reacts to it. No warning, no buildup, no time to prepare what he’s going to say. It makes me shaky inside to even think about.

Like Cecilia said—once I confess to someone else, there is no un-confessing.

Footsteps creak on this floor. I sit up in Nico’s bed, staring at the doorway. My heart hammers in my ribs. I swipe at my eyes just in case, but my face feels dry. The decision circles in on me. To tell or not to tell? Nervousness turns my stomach to static, makes my limbs numb and my thoughts frantic. I want to tell him. I don’t know how not to tell him.

Nico steps into the doorway and turns on the overhead light.

The words wither on my lips, my proclamation of, “I’m pregnant” turning into a short, breathless, “Nico!”

He’s bloodied, bruised, and favoring one leg. He has blood on his mouth and dripping from his nose, his left cheek split open dangerously close to his eye. That strong, confident posture I’m used to is hunched and careful. He tries to ask me what I’m doing in here, but even speaking seems to hurt him, like he can’t draw a deep breath. He leans against the doorway and growls at his own pain like an animal.

I fly to him, all my intentions briefly forgotten as I cup his face and look at the damage. Nico hasnevercome back like this. Even on his harder fights, he might come back looking beat up. But he’s never looked beatdown. Without needing to ask, I already know—Nico lost.

“Come here,” I say, drawing him toward the bathroom. He tries to put on that same brave, painless mask, but I can see it spelled out in the way he moves, the way he breathes. Vinny always kept a first aid kit in the kitchen, but before I can rush off to grab it, Nico’s hand closes around my wrist.

“What were you doing in here?” he asks.

My throat wobbles around the words, unable to find them suddenly.

“There something wrong with the room?”

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