Page 60 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia Don

All at once, I realize what he thinks, that this is somehow about his little project. I almost laugh, as if my problems could be as simple as a bad shade of paint or a burnt-out LED. Tears sting in my eyes, and a quiet part of me decides, for now, I choose to believe that Nico isgood.

“It’s perfect,” I tell him. It’s only half a lie. “I just…I wanted to thank you for it when you got home.”

His hand slips off my wrist, and he nods, relieved.

With a first aid kit opened up on the bathroom floor, I give Nico the strongest painkillers I can find in the house and start the process of cleaning him up. Blood seeps from the back of his head, too, and purple stains his ribs as bruises pool under the skin. He plays the tough guy well, even when I know just taking his shirt off is its own small agony.

“I can tell you’re hurt,” I mumble, dabbing at the cut on his cheek with an alcohol pad. “You’re being too quiet.”

“I’m fine,” he says, like the words are his default setting, the only thing he can parrot without any effort. He’s not fine, he’s dazed, and I think the cut on the back of his head might need stitches.

“How did you get home?”

“Drove.”

I smack him uselessly on the shoulder. “Why the hell wouldn’t you call me?”

“Would you have come?” he asks, as if he doubts it for some reason.

“Of course,” I answer, furious that he would doubt it.

He starts to laugh, low and painful. “Ava, you don’t even have a car. You want us to rideshare together, get blood all over the back of some stranger’s Civic?”

“It’d be better than this,” I mutter bitterly. “And for your information, Idohave a car now. Thaddeus bought me one. He surprised me with it today.”

Nico’s eyes go dark and wild, more alert than he’s been since he stepped in here.

“That fucker,” he snarls. I don’t really know why it upsets him, and his complaints are cut short—or at least redirected—when I dab alcohol against the cut on the back of his head.

“How did you even get this?” I mutter, skirting my fingers over the split skin. It doesn’t look like something from a fight. Nico tries to get up suddenly, but I block him in and push him back down. He really is pathetic when he sits back and growls, eyesflashing darkly. “I’m not done with you,” I say firmly, parroting his usual tone with me back at him. But it shuts him up and keeps him still as I dig into the first aid kit.

“This is the one thing I might be a little good at, so you’re going to sit there and let me do it,” I tell him.

“You a Girl Scout or something?”

“Wannabe nurse. That was the plan out of high school. As you can imagine, I didn’t make it very far.”

“Why not?”

I smile, the question silly if Nico could only think straight for a few seconds. I push myself between his legs, cleaning the cut on his cheek. It doesn’t take a degree to handle the kind of wounds Nico has.

“Blood. Needles. High-intensity situations. None of those were exactly my strong suit back then, as you were so fond of reminding me. I didn’t have the stomach for it, and I never got used to it. I gave up.”

“You’re not doing so bad now,” he says.

I shrug away his praise, avoiding it.

“Being concussed just makes you polite.”

My diagnosis is confirmed when he doesn’t find something clever or cruel to say back. I try to wipe him off with a washcloth, but Nico takes offense to being “treated like a vegetable,” so I chase the grumpy man into bed, at least freshly bandaged and medicated.

I lie in bed next to him, tracing the dark and bloodied patterns on his side. Something about them bothers me. My fingers skirt an abrasion, follow the textured wound that bunches the skin up under my fingers, like working a puzzle. Fists don’t make marks like this and shoes aren’t allowed in the ring.

Maybe I’m just looking for something to keep my attention so I can keep myself distracted, keep my secret sitting safe and neglected at the back of my thoughts.

“You need anything?” I ask.

His hand reaches out and he skirts his thumb across my thigh.

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