Page 70 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia Don

Mae just scoffs, “Who is that?”

“My wife,” Nico says quietly, his gaze boring into mine.

My heart skips a beat.

Before Mae can ask, he adds a sharp, steely, “Leave us alone, Mae.”

She looks offended by how he speaks to her, by the sheer iron in his voice, but she listens. Nico and I gaze at each other in silence until the click-clack of Mae’s stilettos fades out of earshot. He slams the door shut between us and the storage room, where the man inside still moans softly, before his whimpers are locked behind the heavy metal door. Nico rounds on me.

“Ava, what the fuck are you doing—”

It’s all he manages before I have my hands on either side of his face, kissing him desperately. We linger there in each other’s arms, Nico too blindsided to object.

He makes me look at him, his thumbs grazing against the tears on my cheeks. I pull back and wipe them away on my own, furious at myself for shedding them.

“What happened?” he demands, all protective and furious. “Talk to me, Ava. Why are you down here?”

It hurts to admit. This night was supposed to be something fun, something silly—a bad idea going wrong, just like they always do. I almost laugh with the irony of it.

“I wanted to stalk you for once,” I admit through a watery smile.

He looks me over, head to toe—the dress and heels, my makeup done.

“And you did—so why the hell are you crying?” he demands, still reading the tears on my face. “Was it one of those fucks up at the ring? Did one of them hurt you—hell, did they even so much as look at you? Tell me what they did.”

Nico is primed to march upstairs and murder the first person I point at.

It feels so stupid when I finally squeak out,

“No, Nico. Nobody hurt me, I just...I saw you with that woman, and I thought...” My words trail off into a soft silence. Nico reads it plainly, the truth written across my angry, tear-streaked expression as it finally makes sense to him.

“And you werejealous.”

The warmth in his voice comes socloseto happiness—if it didn’t also sound dark as sin. I glare up into his face, forcing all that pain into a sharp, cutting point of indignation.

“What was I supposed to think aboutyour girls—”

I yelp as Nico suddenly hefts me up into his arms, my legs wrapped around his waist and my arms around his neck. “Nico!”

“Was my pretty girl afraid I was giving another woman my time?”

“Shut up!”

He kisses my objections from my lips, hungry and sure of himself as I run my fingers through his hair as he holds me tight. Finally, he says, “If someone called you one ofmy girls, Ava, that’d be grounds for me to beat them to their last breath. Mae’s an escort, that’s all. If there’s one thing in the world you don’t have to worry about, Ava, it’s other women. You’re the only girl I’m addicted to. That’s just how I’m wired. I want what I want, and I don’t settle for less. Nothing else.”

I smile guiltily, and we kiss again, all my anxiety washing away in his heat. His mouth, his tongue, they all reassure me with sweet, hungry kisses that mirror everything I have felt this past week, saying one thing plainly—I missed you.

How long can this last? How long can Salvatore keep him away, keep us apart?

Nico’s possessiveness ties up my heart again, chases out that doubt. That dark, familiar control that I usually fight against—right now, it makes me feel safe. His hand cups my jaw, makes me look at him, eye to eye.

For only a moment, I can be sure of one thing in the universe: I am the only girl Nico Mori is interested in.

He leans in close to my ear and mutters,

“Now you know how it feels every time I think about you and Thaddeus.”

It devastates me.

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