Page 97 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia Don

Luckily for me, he stays busy with work and often comes home drunk.

I get the impression that most of his job isn’t as much practical work as much as it is brown-nosing. Meeting the right people, making the right connections, doing the right favors. Most of his business happens in bars or around dinner tables. He is just another rung on the mafia ladder, connecting the wires and cogs together that hold up the machine and keep it running.

But no matter how many meetings he takes, we have dinner with the immediate family every night. He insists on it. And every night, night after night, Thaddeus sweet-talks Salvatore and Marcel, always talking business, both practical and family. I swear, if he wasn’t so interested in getting in my panties, I would think maybe Thaddeus had a thing for Sal instead, and Contessa should be the one who’s worried.

But one thing they do agree on, over wine and steak, is that the house is much more pleasant without Nico in it. I feel the knowing look that Tessa and Cecilia give me, and I grumpily stab my fork into my steak, keep my eyes down, and hold my tongue.

Cecilia corners me one afternoon when I am changing out the baby’s laundry downstairs—as much as a lady in a wheelchair can corner somebody, when all I would have to do is put a staircase between me and her to escape her interrogation.

“I presume you have a plan,” she says.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say, feigning indifference as I fold laundry into the basket.

“Youmaybe able to pull the wool over Thaddeus’s eyes—a dangerous gamble in and of itself—but do you really think Nico won’t connect the dots?”

“I never said Nico had anything to do with my baby,” I say in calm, measured whispers, refusing to look at her as I snappily fold the clothes and pretend like everything is fine. Her silence is judging and grating, until it finally frays my nerves as she sits there and juststaresat me.

“I am doing Nico a favor!” I insist. “I’mtryingto keep him alive!”

“So am I. Which is why I need to insist that doing him a favor would be taking care of this problem,now,” she says. “If you think he’s reckless now, he will kill himself trying to get to you and the child. Even if it wasn’t his, he would never believe it. You think they won’t do the math? How much longer do you think you can get away with it?”

I glance down into the laundry, the tiny pile of minuscule socks and pastel onesies, which hurt just to look at for too long.

The image of Nico swirling Emma around in his arms plays behind my eyes again. I can’t shake it. I can’t imagine doing this without him. Childbirth, sleepless nights, and first words and fussy tantrums—how can I do all of that without him there? Letting my baby be raised by someone like Thaddeus Mori, who will probably use it as another prop to get into another club and slide another dollar into his bank account. Anasset.

The thought makes me see red, because I can’t be sure Nico isn’t doing the exact same thing. I sling down a onesie into the basket without folding it, emotion washing over me like a wave that rolls over your head.

“I just want it to work out,” I say, the pain warbling in my voice as tears threaten to come. I’ve been so goddamn weepy lately. Even Thaddeus might be second-guessing this agreement withjust how emotional I’ve been, snapping at him one moment and then locking myself in the bathroom to cry the next. Last night, it was because I ordered fries with extra salt, and then decided they were too salty. I cried for half an hour over the sink. The rational part of my brain stood by with her arms crossed, self-aware and refusing to help.

“You more than anyone should know that sometimes, things simply don’t work out.”

Her words cut so deep they don’t even hurt. There are no nerve endings where that knife plunges. I stare at her, but I see my own desperation mirrored back at me. The need to save him.

“Why do you care so much about what happens to Nico?” I mutter, wiping furiously at my leaky eyes.

“Because I raised him,” she sighs through her nose, as if annoyed with her own reasoning, “and as much as he tries to prove me wrong, I am convinced there is something in him worth saving.”

Does she think that I don’t agree with her? That I don’t care for him?

I don’t even know when it started, when Nico slipped from taking over my body and my mind, to taking over my heart instead. But he’s there now. Where I thought there was no room left for anyone, Nico tore his way in and started rearranging my heart just like he did the rest of my life, tearing out the old and making room for himself in its place. But Vinny, he left untouched. On a high pedestal, a dusty box somewhere just within reach.

“If you raised him, then you know what he’s like better than anyone. Is he…” I sigh, hating that I have to even ask the question. I don’t know if I can trust Cecilia to tell me the truth. “Is he ever going to get bored with this? With me? Will he ever just…move on, if things don’t work out the way that he wants?”

“Never.”

Cecilia answers me, full of grim certainty, as if that is theworstof the two possibilities.

“You think he would want the baby?” I ask.

Her silence fills me with uncertainty.

“Do you know him at all?” she finally asks, as if I have asked the stupidest question in the world. But I heard him myself.

I turn away from her, feeling shame and embarrassment creep up my neck.

“I know enough to know better than to trust him,” I tell her. “But if there’s something in Nico worth saving, then there’s something in his baby worth saving. I’m keeping it. No matter what happens, with or without him, and whether the family likes it or not. And to answer your question, no. I don’t have a plan. I don’t have a single goddamn idea what I’m doing, but I know what I’m not doing, and that’s getting rid of my baby.”

Without waiting for the old woman to try to convince me again, I stomp my way out of the room.

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