Page 41 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia Don

“Ava’s barely left her room since she came back with you. She won’t talk any more than she has to just to confirm that she’s alive.” His voice lowers, hovering somewhere between a secret and a threat. “She already spent months in there when she lost Vinny. The last thing she needs is someone like you setting her back and fucking with her head.”

Oh, I fucked more than that.

“You ever think maybe she’s sulking because you’ve got her lined up to marry some greasy-haired weasel in a discount suit? Seeing as how you threw her future in the meat grinder so youcould make your dinner with it, I can see why she’d be a little upset—”

His hands come up fast on my chest. I let him push me back into the lockers, a laugh already half out of my lips. The kid has a lot of goddamn steel in him, I’ll give him that, but he’s out of his game. Angry, emotional outbursts—that’s my home field, not his, and it shows. He’s still holding himself back.

“That’s between her and Sal,” he says. “You think I don’t want to beg her to reconsider? You think I haven’t begged Salto let metry?”

I step closer to him.

“You touch me again, Marcel, I’ll break both your hands.” I grin, clapping him on the shoulder and drawing him in closer. It’s not friendly. “Your problems have got nothing to do with me. The world hurt your sister. I didn’t. When I’m finally in charge again, then you can start coming to me, groveling for me to fix your problems.”

I give him a final clap on the shoulder to send him on his way.

“This is my warning, Nico,” he says, somber and serious. “You stay away from her.”

I give him the courtesy of letting his footsteps fade out of the room before I slam my locker open and grab my keys—to drive straight home to his little sister.

I’ve never been good at doing what other people say I should. Orders, advice, it’s all wasted on me. My will is an iron thing, and it doesn’t bend easy, not even when I want it to. Hell, Icould make my own life a hell of a lot easier if I weren’t so damn stubborn—but I can’t. It’s not how I’m wired.

I swore I’d never get wrapped up in a woman like this again. I told myself, the second I set foot out of the pen, I was done with the whole goddamn species. I couldn’t trust myself around them, always getting in over my head, falling hard and fast and forforever.

And that same night, Ava St. Clair happened.

The house is quiet at this hour.

Or it is, until the sole of my boot slams against Ava’s locked bedroom door and cracks it off its hinges.

12

Ava

Thebangcracks like a gunshot. It jolts me awake, floods fear and grief into my heart. I scramble to my feet, my eyes roaming the darkness without seeing it, trying to make sense of where I am. I see a party, white tablecloths, and bits of bloodied bone glittering in the summer sun. Vinny’s name turns into a broken sob on my lips.

My back hits a wall. It jolts me to the present as a hand closes on my throat. I can’t breathe. My nails claw against the phantom hold on my neck. Finally, my eyes focus, really see the figure in front of me. The room creeps into the corners of my vision, familiar and solid. Half a year’s worth of memories abruptly wedge themselves between me and Vinny’s murder again.

Nico stands in the moonlight spilling through the open curtains, his hand on my neck, his words breaking through the fog of screams in my head.

“Look at me.”

Finally, I look at him and really see him. I gasp for air as I realize I can’t get any. His hold loosens as I draw in deep, shaking breaths. I push away from him.

“What the fuck?” I yell, too confused and bewildered to even make it sound angry.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he asks, furious withmefor whatever reason.

The question is so stupid, it snatches the word from my lips.

“Sleeping?!”

“Yeah? Is that how you pass the time in here, curled up in bed and dreaming the days away like Sleeping Beauty, just waiting for someone to come wake her up?”

“It’s the middle of the night!”

“You know damn well what I’m talking about. I thought you were just avoidingme, playing your little hard-to-get games. I didn’t know you were locked up in here all day and night, avoiding the world.”

I knew this was coming, like a predicted storm charted across the Atlantic, counting the days until its rain and wind batter against my window. Nico’s texts have piled up, unanswered:

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