Page 73 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia Don

“I just got out of the fucking pen, Sal. Jesus Christ. The last thing I’m trying to do is get tied down to some domestic bullshit.”

My feet go still.

I’m too far away now, and I can’t hear what Salvatore says, but Nico answers,

“Don’t get you and me mixed up. Hell, you don’t even know me like that. You’ve got your dream life, and I’ve got mine, and kids aren’t in my picture—”

Kids?

I can’t feel my limbs as I stand here, longing to run but unable to, my feet suddenly numb and my stomach lurching again.

“Because it’s just not for me. None of it.”

His voice draws closer to the door, and suddenly I remember how to walk, how torun, hurrying through the foyer and up the stairs, two at a time. Somewhere on the floor below me, a door closes hard. I pause on the landing, my knees trembling.

It feels like a trick, a magician making you think the gold coin is in one hand and whisking it away into nothing. I’m left reeling by the sudden reversal of all the relief I just found the other night. I hovered on a stairwell just like this and I heard Nico saymy wife, and I was riding the high of those two little words for days.

Now, it’s just the opposite.

Nico doesn’t want kids?

It doesn’t even make sense! All those low, threatening promises of knocking me up and putting a baby in me—was it just another way to own me, so that I have to carry this little piece of him with me everywhere I go?

Or is Marcel right, and this is all just Nico’s plan to break up my marriage to Thaddeus? It seems so obvious suddenly, a flash of anger and betrayal cutting me to the bone.

My wife, he said.

More likemygullible, hormonal, pregnant little chess piece!

I’m in a daze, so I don’t even notice Tessa already sitting in the nursery when I first walk in, my thoughts flying Mach speed. I jump when I notice her. She scribbles something on a drawing pad while her foot nudges the bassinet, keeping it rocking slowly back and forth. She glances up at me, her eyes devious as I notice her there.

“Good morning,” I force myself to mutter.

Tessa returns the greeting, watching me carefully. Emma is sound asleep in the bassinet, and it is probably the constant nudging of Tessa’s foot that keeps her that way.

“Do you need anything?” I ask. I skim the room for tiny laundry or blankets that need changing or trash that needs taking out. Anything to get out from under the gaze of another person, where I can go have a proper breakdown. Tessa doesn’t answer me, her expression strange. As if she knows something that I don’t.

“Did you really think you were going to get away with it?” she asks suddenly.

The air chills between us.

A new kind of nausea tugs at the back of my throat. A voicelesswhattries and fails to leave my lips. I’m going to just start sobbing at this rate. Does she know? Did she overhear me throwing up, three floors down? Did Cecilia tell her? Or does she just know, the way Cecilia knew, able to see the changes in me that she so recently went through herself? Panic swarms in my head, a hundred excuses and denials and apologies all throwing themselves into motion, and I reach for whichever one is closest, most convenient.

“I…”

“I appreciate how attentive you’ve been lately, Ava, but I’m not letting you work on yourbirthday,” she chides me gently. The world rights itself like a near-miss car crash, all four wheels suddenly back on the road as Tessa finishes, “I think I can manage on my own for just one day.”

Oh. My birthday?

My legs solidify again, air returning to my aching lungs.

Right.

I’m stunned that I forgot. Vinny always did something first thing—a ridiculous, multi-course breakfast in bed, or blindfolding me before I was even up, or covering the whole room in streamers and confetti overnight with a present already on the pillow. It was always something with him, always anevent. From the first moment I woke up, my birthday was in full swing, impossible to forget or ignore, even when all the attention just made me want to blush and hide.

Today felt like just another morning. Nothing special. It didn’t even cross my mind.

The nausea tickles the back of my throat again.

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