Page 88 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia Don

“Aren’t you supposed to be the diplomatic one?”

“Not where you’re concerned.”

I look away, unable to meet his gaze. It’s almost surprising to me that Marcel and Nico don’t get along. I was lying when I said Thaddeus and Nico were alike, but Marcel and Nico—they both have one very important thing in common.

“Thaddeus is starting the move-in process this weekend, Ava.”

“Well, hopefully he doesn’t snore.”

I shrug my shoulders as Marcel and I stare each other down. He waits for me to break, for the mask to slip and show my true hand. He wants to see that I don’t want this. He wants me to beg him to do something about it, but we hold each other’s gazes until Marcel sighs under his breath and turns away.

I close the door after him, resting my throbbing head against the wood, where I can finally panic in peace. I am already mourning my late-night trysts with Nico and dreading every queasy early morning. How am I supposed to hide a pregnancy while sharing a room full-time with a man?

My stomach lurches as if the baby thinks the same, sick of all this drama and nonsense just like I am. I agree with it. Disasters shouldn’t be allowed to strike before noon.

Inside the wooden box left on my pillow, I find my birthday present from Nico: the most beautiful pocketknife I’ve ever seen, with an abalone handle that shimmers like an oil slick, giving off every pearlescent, reflective shade in the rainbow.

Since you don’t like guns, and I owed you.

The pocketknife Nico stole from me was some cheap little thing, the kind of pocketknife you just end up with somehow. It was probably bought at a gas station off the interstate. This knife has a subtle weight to it, its design intricate and ornate. The handle feels smooth and cold in my grip. I press the gemstone-studded push button, and the blade flips out to a sharp, dangerous point. The wordswith loveswirl across the blade.

Holding it in my hand, it fits me better than the lingerie ever did.

24

Nico

Don’t come to my room anymore.

What did I do to piss you off?

Believe it or not, you’re not the problem this time.

I don’t find out what Ava’s vague texting means until almost dusk, my knuckles bloody from a long day, when I roll up to the house and find piles of cardboard boxes littered around the front doorway. I wade through them. My instincts bristle, like an animal catching an unfamiliar scent. Something’s wrong in my territory, and my hackles rise in response.

Ava’s room is a rectangular orange light at the end of the hall—where a man’s figure strides in and out of view.

Thaddeus Mori marches through Ava’s bedroom as if he owns the place. He clutches a string of LEDs in his grip—the same goddamn lights I installed over Ava’s bed, the ones she liked so much—and I watch as he chucks them straight into the trash bag by her door.

What the fuck is this?

I’m about to walk toward him, a honing missile on a target, when a familiar voice calls out,

“Some advice, Nico?”

I swivel and find Cecilia there in her wheelchair, her beady eyes trained on me.

“Don’t.”

My mother’s memory has mostly turned to shadow now. When I try to picture her, her face is always one expression, pressed into my psyche from some photograph that I saw often enough that it stuck. The details have finally faded, eroded by time. In her place, Cecilia did what she could, just enough to leave an imprint on me. I don’t know if we love each other, but I know that when I got arrested, she was my one phone call, the first person I reached out to. Not my underboss, or one of the family’s high-profile lawyers, or our connections in the police force. Not even the woman I killed a man over.

I called Cecilia like a boy calling home, and told her what I’d done. I wasn’t tearful or afraid, I didn’t need comfort—but something in me still reached out for her first.

When the verdict came back guilty, hers was the only gaze I couldn’t meet. I still can’t. We haven’t reconnected, dancing around this reunion day after day, and finally, it’s here. Of all times. Hers might be the only command that could stop me in my tracks. She’s parked up at the entryway to one of the sitting rooms, watching the newcomer like a nosy neighbor who happens to share the same roof.

“Where’s Ava?” I ask her. “Does she know what he’s doing?”

“Of course she does. She’s with Tessa and the baby, no doubt, doing what sheshould be, and letting things take their natural course. You’d do well to learn from her example.”

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