Page 92 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia Don

“Come on, baby,” I croon softly to her, begging her to stop. “It’s okay. Just tell me what you want. Anything.”

Her shrill little cry rattles my eardrums.

Overwhelmed, I head downstairs to try walking her around. Her voice fills up the house as she cries to the point of hiccups. We walk up and down the stairs, we turn circles in the sitting rooms, we go around and around, looking at everything I can think to show her and get her attention. She cries harder.

I slump down in the living room with her, begging her to stop, on the verge of crying myself.

What am I doing wrong?

This whole time I’ve been telling myself I have to be prepared to be alone—maybe forever. It turns out, I can’t be alone with a baby for ten minutes without a disaster-level meltdown. My own emotions lash and roil right alongside Emma’s, my nerves so frayed and thin lately, I want to break down right along with her.

“What’s all the fuss?”

My head jerks up as Nico steps into the room, holding a familiar box in his hands.

“Nico,” I gasp, the word lost in Emma’s crying. I didn’t expect him to be back at the house. I look between him and the box of Vinny’s things in his hands. “What are you doing with that?”

“Bringing it to you for safekeeping. Thaddeus was going to throw it away,” Nico says. He carries Vinny’s things to me and puts them on the couch.

My heart skips.

“What? I told him just to push my stuff out of the way, not—”

There’s hardly any point to speaking as Emma gives another long, anguished cry. I brace myself against the tiny thread of anxiety spinning and spinning inside of me, threatening to snap.

“I’m sorry, I just…she won’t stop, and I don’t know what’s wrong, and…”

Suddenly, Emma is whisked from my grasp. I blink as Nico scoops her up into his arms.

“You got a lot to say, don’t you?” he teases her, scratching his fingers against her belly. “That’s a lot of opinions for somebody so little.”

Even Emma is surprised, too surprised to cry for a few moments, her big eyes wide and curious as she’s stolen away. She looks at Nico, who sweet-talks her lowly, asking her what the big idea is. The moment she thinks about crying again, Nico cradles one big hand around her neck and the other under her back, feigning tossing her around as he carefully swoops her up and down in the air. Her desperate crying turns into frantic giggles. She loves it, squealing and laughing. Nico grins as he wins her over in a flash, her little limbs kicking, begging for more, each dip of his arms accompanied by a playful roar as he pretends to sling her around.

Nico dances around the dusk-purpled living room with a baby in his arms. It twists my heart into a vise.

“It’s not your fault you’re a little troublemaker, is it?” he asks her as he gives her another playful pretend-toss. “It runs in the family.”

He plays right along with her, holds her so carefully but so fondly, sheer adoration in his face—no matter what he feels for Salvatore, with one look I can tell he would never hold that against Emma.

He’s so perfect with her that now my tears start coming and they don’t stop. I look at him like that and see everything that I could give him. How can he not want that? I can see it so plainly in him, right here in front of me!

My hand slides against my belly, and suddenly, the truth feels lightweight.

“Nico,” I choke out through my tight throat, desperate to tell him.

He spins around, surprised by the tears in my voice—but his expression darkens as his eyes land on something over my shoulder.

“Put her down,now.”

Salvatore’s voice is cold and deadly as it interrupts us, cutting through my confession like a blade. I recognize his tone immediately—the resigned voice of a man who has already made a deadly decision, who is too outraged to beangry. I leap to my feet, spinning around to find Salvatore, Marcel, and Thaddeus standing in the arched doorway. Thaddeus is red in the face with a necklace of ugly, violent bruises around his neck and one bloodshot eye. He cradles his hand to his chest.

Emma whines when Nico stops playing with her, frozen to the spot as she squirms in his grip.

“Sal, I wasn’t…”

For the first time, genuine worry colors Nico’s voice.

Emma starts to cry again, filling up the tense air as her fingers tug at his shirt, trying to figure out how to get him to play with her again. I rush to them and slip Emma out of his arms and into mine. I turn to stand between him and the angry men.

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