Page 94 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia Don

My brother’s gaze moves between me and Nico, and he digs the muzzle of the gun deeper into Nico’s skull. “I’d be doing her a fucking favor, getting rid of you.”

“Marcel, please,” I beg him, on the verge of sobbing, while Emma cries and cries, a hundred different emotions roiling on all sides of the room, anger and misery lashing against each other and whipping the room into a frenzy.

“What the hell is happening?” Tessa says suddenly, stepping sharply into the chaos as if she’s impervious to all the tension in the air. She lifts Emma from Salvatore and bounces the baby on her shoulder. Tessa’s gaze moves coldly around the room—from my tear-stained face, to Salvatore’s wrathful expression, to Nico being held one trigger finger from death.

“In my sitting room?Really, Sal?” she asks dryly.

Her calm demeanor shakes up the tension of the room.

“We’re just taking out the trash, ma’am,” Marcel says calmly, his eyes fixed on Nico.

“No one is taking anything anywhere until I know what’s going on,” Contessa says. She stays in the doorway and blocks the way, her eyes on Salvatore as she waits patiently for an explanation.

“Thaddeus was getting settled into Ava’s room,” Salvatore says, “When out of nowhere, Nico followed him outside and jumped him in the yard. He nearly killed him—”

Tessa interrupts, “But he didn’t, because I saw what happened between them, and I stopped it myself. I sent Nico in here to give this back to Ava,” she says, gesturing to the box of Vinny’s things on the couch, “while I went to see what other damage he’d done to the room. I didn’t know you’d be staging a public execution in my living room. These seem to be the only things he outright stole—”

“Stole?” Thaddeus rasps. “It’s a bunch of garbage taking up space.”

“They’re sentimental. From Vincent Mori,” Tessa says sharply, still speaking directly to Salvatore; she is the only person in the room who he can hear through his anger and his distrust, her words the only ones that reach him. “And even if it was junk, it still doesn’t belong tohim.”

I’m holding my breath and my poker face, silently begging Tessa to talk sense into him.

“Nico knew what this box was and what it meant, and he knew Ava would be devastated to lose it. So he stopped him, perhaps aggressively, and he took it back. If there’s any crime in that, I don’t see Nico being the perpetrator.”

Salvatore glances to Thaddeus, his gaze dark. He weighs his judgment, the whole room seeming to chill for a moment as he digests the truth. Thaddeus glares down at the floor.

“I didn’t know they were important,” he tries to say, but Salvatore interrupts before he can dig the hole deeper.

“Even if the version of the truth I got wasabridged…that’s still not grounds to jump a man. You don’t take justice into your own hands, not in this family. If there’s a dispute, it’s brought to us.” His gaze lingers on Emma as he adds, “And he still knew better than to put his hands onher.”

“That was my fault,” I jump in, desperate to dive on the grenade. “I handed her to Nico. Just for a minute, I didn’t think anything about it at the time. It was my fault, Salvatore, I swear,” I beg,frantic for him to believe me, even if it isn’t true. “It was only going to be for a second, and he didn’t do anything. Yousaw.”

Salvatore’s anger doesn’t soften easily. His eyes move between me and Tessa, trying to read us. He steps closer to his wife, his voice low, so that I only hear the slightest beat of the syllables as he asks,

“Why are you defending him?”

Tessa meets his gaze steadily. “Because the punishment doesn’t fit the crime, and you know it. You’re just looking for an excuse. If you had a real grievance against him, then you’d have my full support, love. But all you really have is a childhood rivalry neither of you outgrew. This isn’t worth shooting your brother over, Sal. If the rest of the family hears that it went down this way, there will be sides drawn. I don’t want to raise my daughter in a divided house.”

Salvatore’s silence fills the room.

Hope dares to spring up inside my chest. I don’t understand why Tessa is defending him, and I don’t think Salvatore does either, but she’s resolute. He loves her and respects her too much to simply ignore her.

Marcel stands with the gun still in his grip, immobile, waiting patiently for the verdict. I know he must be itching for it, to have everything so close to being back to the way it was before. So close to a solution, but it keeps slipping further and further away.

“How long are we going to wait, Sal?” Marcel asks. “Are we just going to push it off and push it off, until it’s too late and thedamage is done? What does he have to do before the reason is good enough?”

“I don’t know,” Salvatore says, and then finally sighs, “but this isn’t it.”

26

Nico

Death and I have been in a race for a long time now, the bastard always nipping right at my heels. But this time, I tripped, and he damn near got me. If it weren’t for Tessa, I’d already be rotting.

I have to play it careful now. That’s what I tell myself, but I’ve told myself that before, and it never really makes a difference. I don’t change. Three nights past the day I should have died, and I’m already spinning out. Ava’s messages eat away at my skull, chewing toward the brain matter like rabies, making me crazy and violent:

I’m dangerous for you, Nico.

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