Page 80 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia Don

“I guess I did,” she admits. “But this was never going to end well for him.”

“It was never going to end well for either of you.”

Ava’s tiny smile fades, her eyes crinkling with confusion and then blowing wide when my hand slides right back between her legs. She stares at me, shocked as the game continues now that Thaddeus is gone.

“He isn’t the only one who fucked up tonight,” I say lowly, scraping the words against her ear. “You know what you did.”

“I invited my fiancé to my birthday dinner,” she says through her teeth.

“You lied to me. By omission.”

“That’s not lying,” she snips. “Especially since you apparently know everything anyway.”

I snap the garter belt on her thigh. We meet eye to eye, my thoughts the color red and the consistency of ash as we both realize I know what she has under that dress.

“He bought it for me,” she says defensively. “Along with the dress. For my birthday, I guess.”

A familiar calm washes over me. No panic, no rush. I stand up and straighten out my tie, casually tossing enough cash onto thetable to cover the bill and then some. In the state he’s in, chasing Thaddeus down and beating him to death on the sidewalk won’t require any urgency. Much like his place in life, he can’t have gotten too far. Sensing the change in mood, Ava grabs me by the wrist and holds me in place.

“Nico,no.” She’s not afraid of me, meeting my stare even when she knows exactly what I want to do. I almost pull away when she pleads, “It’s my birthday.”

That little technicality reaches out and snags me around the ankle, holding me in place until my anger has nowhere to go except back at her. “Only for the next couple of hours. Maybe I’ll take my time with him. Really let him suffer before I kill him. Andyou...”

I lean down, my angry whisper at her ear,

“You’re in trouble, little girl.”

For a few weeks now, I’ve had keys to a tiny apartment in the family territory. There’s not much in it, only what needs to be—a bed in the corner and a semi-automatic in the closet. It’s some place to crash when the work runs long, a hideout when tensions are high.

I bring Ava there after dinner, all those little birthday plans gone up in smoke.

It sure as fuck isn’t some five-star penthouse suite. It’s not her prettied-up fairytale bedroom. It’s a thin, springy mattress on a twin-size bedframe, with a single burnt-out lightbulb overhead.

Shadows stretch into the room. A flickering neon sign across the street casts a red haze over the darkness that lays over everything before us. Ava enters, the only pretty thing in a bare, ugly landscape. Her eyes pass over the empty walls and the narrow, barred windows.

“What is this place? My timeout?” she asks.

I shut the door and slide the chain on the lock.

There’s something off about Ava tonight, something in the way she looks at me. I can’t read it. She tosses her bag aside and marches fearlessly into the only bedroom. She sits on the mattress and bounces, testing how uncomfortable it is. The springs squeak. My pampered brat has probably never laid on a bed like that in her whole life.

“How old are you?” I ask, sliding my hands into my pockets.

“Isn’t that something you’re supposed to know before you start fucking me?”

She drops her high heels onto the floor one at a time. The girl is really going to test me tonight.

“You think I won’t make you cry just because it’s your birthday, Ava?”

“How did you even know that?” she finally demands, heated. “I never told you that!”

Isthatwhat has her on edge? Her birthday?

“Why should you have to tell me?” I step closer, dragging the backs of my fingers up the side of her knee. “Knowing everythingabout you is my pleasure.” Ava glares like there’s some big riddle in all this, but there isn’t. It’s so simple, I don’t know how to make it sound complicated enough for her. I lift my hand and catch her by the jaw.

“Now, why don’t you explain why the fuck you were spending your birthday with another man?”

Her expression flickers at being called out. “You mean myfiancé?”

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