Page 69 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia Don

I dare a glance into the room. Nico stands with his back to the door, with the shape of a man stretched out on the floor at his feet. Mae stands off to the side, her arms crossed and her expression flat. The man begs at their feet.

“Lie,” she says.

Nico stomps on the man’s knee in response. He screams again. He begs the woman to help him, trying to crawl toward her.

“Get the fuck away from her,” Nico snarls at him, kicking him back. “You know how fucking ironic your name is? Broke Richie. So what the fuck should I do with a broke, sniveling little pervert that puts his hands on things that he doesn’t have any rights to?”

He begs senselessly.

“I don’t know, man,” he says. “I don’t know! I can’t take it back.”

“You’re goddamn right you can’t.”

My breath is frozen in my throat. I stare at the scene, watching Nico beat the living hell out of another man—for another woman. The man on the ground is just another Thaddeus. And the woman…

Is she just anotherme?

Nico kneels down, his voice softening. I can barely hear him.

“Now, that’s a woman who takes a lot of pride in her appearance, Richie,” Nico continues, too smoothly, too familiar in this role, as if he’s run the script a hundred times. “And I know you’re a narcissistic little fuck, even if you don’t have any right to be. So, for every one of her nails that you broke, I’m gonna take a tooth. One of these, right here in front.”

“Nico—” he begs.

My stomach clenches, and finally, I can’t look. I turn away, but that doesn’t stop me from hearing. I didn’t see pliers or tools nearby. I wonder if Nico is ripping out the man’s teeth with his bare hands. My head swims and my heart pounds. I don’t care what Nico does for the family. Not really. It’s no different than what Marcel has done, what I have done—I don’t take any moral high ground about that.

But that he’s doing it forher.

The yelling stops. The screams dissolve into pathetic, wheezy whimpers. Richie tries to talk and it comes out garbled, like baby-speak, through his tears. I can’t see the mangled mess left in his mouth, but I can hear it.

Nico and Mae talk, lower now, their voices mingling under Richie’s groans. I force myself to look again.

Nico reaches into his pocket, handing over cash to her. He tells her to get her nails fixed. She wads up the bills and slides them between her breasts.

“Thank you,” she says, stepping up to him. Her hands touch his chest.

“Get your hands off me,” Nico says, his voice cutting like steel through her intentions and my expectations. She lowers her hands, eyes shifting with derision.

“I have a wife,” he says.

The word is low and threatening, backing her off.

Mae looks offended, almost bitter in her confusion.

“Most of my men have wives,” she says, looking over him.

“Most of your men are fucking pathetic.”

The tight knot in my stomach untangles, the vise around my heart suddenly releasing like a clamp. A numb shock tingles through my system, emotional pins and needles as the blood rushes back into the numb parts of me. All the anger is sapped out of me with that one word.

A wife?

Does that mean...?

The meaning of it all clicks: Nico’s girls vs. Nico’swife. All at once, I realize what each category is, and which one he thinks I fall into. It isn’t the first. Mae is a prostitute for the family, and whatever else Nico might be to her, he isn’t her client.

I am so overwhelmed, so shocked, that I realize too late that I have nowhere to go as the pair head my way. They approach the stairwell where I am hidden against the doorframe. I back upagainst the wall, but I am painfully in plain sight, nowhere to run. I can barely see through the tears that well up, silent and bitter and angry at the misunderstanding.

Nico and Mae step into the doorway. They both see me at the same time. Nico’s gaze flashes from shock, to confusion, to anger. The colors of a dozen different emotions work across his face—but more than anything, he looks worried.

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