Page 64 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia Don

I swipe instead to the tracker I put on Ava’s phone when I first set it up. Her phone’s location shows on the map, a tiny dot moving along somewhere in the house. The tension bleeds out of me. She’s here, and that means she’s safe. For now.

I drag myself to the sink, taking a mouthful of water and spitting old blood into the basin. I run my tongue along my teeth, feeling for anything loose, but I don’t find any damage. Ava’s care is littered over my body. Bandages and ointment and skin glue holding me together. She left a bottle of pain pills out. The real deal, not some over-the-counter trash that would barely touch a toothache, but I use the pain to keep me sharp. Focused. I’m not going to lay up in bed all day and lick my wounds. I didn’t let her do it. I might be a mix of every bad trait you can inherit, but at least I’m not that much of a hypocrite.

I go to Ava’s room. It’s empty, the bed unused. She hasn’t decorated it yet, all the excess items still piled up in the corner. I don’t care. It makes it easy to spot the car keys sitting on the top of her dresser. I swipe them, march down to the garage, and click the start-up. A red BMW roars to life near the back of the multi-car garage, its lights flashing. I hobble my way to it, rip open the door, and start tearing through the console, the glovebox, under the seats. I swipe my hands under the wheel arches, pry the vents out with a pocketknife until the dash is mangled and the upholstery is cut up.

I don’t find anything suspicious. No tracker. Just an ordinary car.A gift.

Goddamn, it almost makes meangrier, as I plunge a knife into what’s left of the upholstery.

My vision redder than the gutted car, I get in and tear out of the indoor garage, the wheels spinning wild and grass kicking up as I sling it onto the lawn and park the car front and center before the house. The best place for the show. Front-row seats.

I do a little work on it, some personalization that the car sorely needed, and then I get ready to go into the city. Footsteps shake the house, raised voices calling out in alarm. Upstairs, I fasten my tie and slide my wallet into my pocket. I straighten my cuff links, covering my beaten body in my most expensive suit, with polished shoes and dark shades. I counterbalance cuts and bruises with the one thing that will make people look past them—money.

Outside the window, a thin line of black smoke cuts into the air.

When I step out of the house, hot flames lick from the car’s open windows, eating up the interior of the cabin. The rags in the gas can are almost burned through. I step around the two men gawking in front of the house, one of them holding a fire extinguisher so small, he must have pulled it out from under the kitchen sink. I move around the car, ignoring the stunned people filling up the doorway behind me as the chaos attracts attention.

I am almost to the first gate when the flames reach the gas tank. Even from here, I hear the rush of ravenous fire and the shattering of glass as Thaddeus Mori’s gift is swallowed up in flames.

They’re still dealing with the mess two hours later.

Ava has texted me a single, ironic sentence:

Tell me you didn’t.

They’ve pushed the blackened, burnt-out body of the car down the road, where the tow truck can get to it easier. The grass on the yard is fucked, ashy in some places and completely gone in others. They’re hauling the wreckage onto the back of a truck as I drive by. Salvatore and Marcel stand and watch the ordeal as I drive past them and pull up to the front doors of the main house.

The women stand in the doorway, watching. Salvatore’s pretty little wife paces, on the phone with someone, while Cecilia perches like a vulture watching the only interesting show in town. Ava stands between them with Tessa’s baby. She bounces the little girl in her arms. My thoughts go wild seeing her like that, a baby nuzzled up on her shoulder and curling tiny fingers into her shirt. My grip tightens on the steering wheel, and I draw in an angry breath of fresh leather.

My girl isn’t going to have another man’s car or engagement ring, and she sure as hell isn’t going to have another man’s baby. Not if I can fucking help it. All eyes are on me as I step out of the SUV and march straight toward Ava.

Salvatore’s wife comes sweeping in between us. Contessa stands between me and Ava and my own niece. The woman might only be a couple inches taller than Ava, but she knows her place on the totem pole. She holds herself like a mob boss’s wife, like I don’t tower over her by a single centimeter.

“That’s far enough, Nico,” she says.

I stop.

The women surround me, a flock of little songbirds ready to dive at the hawk to get it away from the nest.

“Easy, ladies,” I murmur, dangling the new key fob. “I come bearing gifts.”

In the driveway stands the replacement for the car that I torched, Ava’sactualnew car: a pristine white, top-of-the-line G-wagon. The Mercedes is specially armored with a bulletproof cabin and windows. It’s not the sort of model you can pick up off the lot unless you know where to go, but some parts of this city haven’t changed.

Ava is utterly speechless as she pieces together what I’ve done.

“But…why?”

She fumbles her own question, not knowing how to ask it.

Ava knows damn well why I would give her the car, and why I would torch the old one. She isn’t asking that. Her unspoken question is understood only by the two of us: why would I do thisin front of the family?

Neither of us can admit to the obvious truth—that Ava and I have been sleeping together for weeks, and that jealousy and I do not play well together.

“I promised you a wedding present,” I say, before she has to explain away my insanity. “And I don’t take kindly to my cousin shortchanging you with some standard sedan. Once you represent my family, you accept nothing but the best. Do you understand?”

The double meaning makes Ava somehow pale and pink at the same time, the blood rushing to different parts of her face, unable to decide if it wants to fill up those pretty, high cheekbones or stay in her ears.

My eyes drift to the baby on her shoulder. Moving carefully, under the sharp gaze of Contessa Mori, I dangle the key fob like a teething ring in front of those big, dark eyes. The baby reaches out a stubby hand, no depth perception, as she tries and fails to swipe at it.

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