Page 98 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia Don

28

Nico

My next fight is with Summers, and Ava won’t even be there to watch me beat her favorite underdog into the dirt. It’s a damn shame. I like Summers, too. I like the way he fights. Some people get into the ring for the money or the notoriety, the street cred that comes with a cage like this. Summers gets into the ring because he has a real talent for blood sport. If he wasn’t making enough off the ring, he’d make a good hitman.

When Summers and I go toe to toe, I’m not fully healed off that last fight, the unfair beatdown I got at the hands of a bunch of masked thugsbeforeI even stepped into the ring with a 250-pound goliath. That doesn’t stop me from beating him within an inch of his life.

The kid knows how to fight, but like me, he doesn’t know how to give up until he’s clenching his soul between his teeth. The crowd is mad for it. It’s closer than it should be when I’m stilloff my game, but once I get the upper hand, it’s over. He doesn’t twist his way out of this one, not this time. I stand over him, blood smeared at my feet. When he won’t do it himself, even when he can’t get up, even when the last of his strength trembles in his arms and his knees, I take his hand and force him to tap.

The organizers accept it.

Anything else, and I’m gonna have to bash his head in to get him to go down.

I take my victory, hit the target that Ava painted on the man’s back like a bullet. Maybe she’ll change her mind now about who her favorite fighter is. Or maybe I’ll have to work my way through every one of these sorry sons of bitches, until she gets to me. I wouldn’t mind. If she wants me to fight for her, I will.

The voices in the main room are muffled as I make my way to the back, stepping into a room where I expect to be greeted by familiar faces and the usual gruff celebration. There’s no one here. The silence of the empty room feels loud, the humming from the shoddy electrical filling up my head and my chest. My instincts bristle.

At my locker, the lock’s been cut with a bolt cutter, the metal door left open. My clothes are still inside, but there’s one item missing from the top shelf: my pistol. A quiet dread grows heavy in the pit of my stomach. They took the gun, but they left Ava’s knife in my pants pocket.Dammit. I take it out and switch the blade open, prowling the room with deadened steps. I circle the lockers and the showers and pop open the storage closet, all while bracing for a bullet to come slinging out of the dark.

There’s no one here.

I shut the only door in or out of the room and change fast. Something’s happening, but I don’t know what. I keep the knife on me as I inch into the staircase, on high alert. I listen for footsteps and check corners every step of the way. But I’m alone, stalked by my own shadow and the echo of my own steps.

I push out through the church, past the broken stained-glass windows and blobs of dense graffiti. The shadows seem long and human-like, a hundred unseen eyes watching me from the dark, just out of the corner of my eye. Shining my phone’s light over the black room reveals no one. Just the shadows, and just the dark.

Fuck.

It feels like prison all over again, when tension was high or a riot was on the horizon, that heavy weight ofexpectation, knowing the jump was going to come but not knowing when. I ignore my car, leaving it, not trusting that it hasn’t been tampered with. I lose myself in the New York streets, always checking over my shoulder, checking faces, watching my back, until I am close enough to the public. I call a cab.

The night feels more normal than it should. Music thumps from passing cars. Someone talks overly loud on a phone, some foreign language running a mile a minute as he paces at the crosswalk.

Maybe something went wrong. Maybe the timing was off, maybe it was just a message—but I’m still down a gun, and I don’t like that. I catch a ride straight back to the shitty stash house apartment, where I have the semi stashed in the closet. Overkill is better than underperforming.

When I make it back to the apartment in one piece, I throw open the door and head straight to the closet—where the gun is gone, the door left wide open. I realize the mistake too late, hearing the footsteps behind me just as the bedroom door smoothly swings closed. I flip Ava’s knife open and slowly turn around.

It’s not another group of thugs tonight.

It’s just one.

Marcel stands between me and the only exit out of this room. He clasps his empty hands in front of him, as if I couldn’t get through him if I wanted to. Even fresh off a fight and barely on my feet, just hand to hand, I could tear him apart. I wouldn’t evenneedthe knife. I sigh, my shoulders slumping. All that fucking tension, just for this.

“What the fuck do you want, Marcel?”

“I told you what I wanted, Nico. I told you weeks ago. And you ignored it. I thought a little corrective punishment—a good beating and a lost fight—might be enough to make you change your ways and send a message to those foolish enough to take your side. But it seems you just can’t grasp context clues.”

Him? He was the one who sent them?

It suddenly makes sense. Angel’s vehement denial of knowing anything about me getting jumped, all of the family playing stupid and accusing each other, pointing fingers and tossing blame. And all along, I didn’t expect the one person who actually had a real motive to fuck up my life—Marcel.

I guess fair’s fair.

“You coming here for tips on how to intimidate a man?” I ask him. “I can give you some pointers.”

His smile is tight and cold, and he pulls his pistol from the inside of his jacket.

“No, I’m done with intimidation and warnings, Nico. You and I both know what the right choice is for the family, and it isn’t you. You see, there is something that you and I agree on, as much as it pains me to admit, something you said that really resonated and stuck with me these past couple of weeks. Sometimes, you do have to take charge. Sometimes you have to make a decision, even when that decision isn’t asked of you. I know what Salvatore wants, and I know that it’s an order he can’t allow himself to give. But if I were to act on my own, without his blessing—”

“Then half the family would come crawling out of the woodwork, saying exactly the same shit I’ve been preaching all along. That people outside the family can’t be trusted. If you could’ve killed me all nice and tidy, Marcel, you would’ve done it weeks ago.”

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