Page 52 of Surprise Pregnancy for Villain

He raises his hands in surrender. He then lifts his clothes from the chair and puts them on. I fall back on the bed where I hide under the blankets as I hear the resounding thud of the door when he leaves.

Chapter Twenty-One

Ezio

I wake up at the crack of dawn, unable to get enough sleep from tossing and turning in my bed all night. I retreated to my bedroom after my fight with Nicki yesterday.

Did she really accuse me of only wanting her for sex? After everything I’d done for her? At that point, I was practically offended and not to mention, extremely pissed. I don’t think she understands that if I didn’t want her, I wouldn’t have intervened in this mess, and I’d sleep peacefully at nights knowing I didn’t have her to worry about. But I did. Ididintervene. I placed myself in between Nicki and my family.Why?Because I’m already falling for her.

Why do people need verbal declarations of love? Are actions not enough?

It’s no use mulling our fight when I can hash things out with her. I get up from bed and head for the kitchen. On the way there, I stop in front of Nicki’s room. I knock on the door. Maybe we can still sort this out before the tension worsens. However, there’s no answer. I knock again. Still no answer. I slowly open the door and find her silhouette under the blankets. She’s still sleeping. I walk toward her and notice that her cheeks and nose are red. She must have been crying quietly last night because I heard nothing. She’s pouting as she sleeps. Watching her, my anger slips away. It shouldn’t have come to this. We shouldn’t have fought like that. It made no sense, and it isn’t productive, especially when I ended up being the bad guy. Leave it to a Borelli to turn a conversation around.We need to be on the same side.

I tuck the blankets around her shoulders, and she grumbles in her sleep before turning away. It’s like she can sense that I’m in her room. I gently close the door and proceed to the kitchen. My stomach rumbles as I make breakfast for us. I prepare some coffee and then a simple meal of toast, bacon, and eggs. I ensure not to burn anything this time, and I carefully lay them on a paper plate. As I dig into my food, I replay the conversation I had with Nicki last night. I try to pick apart some details that I might have missed.

When she started talking about her feelings, I felt this strong urge to leave the room. It wasn’t her. It was me. I hate feeling vulnerable. Expressing my feelings usually does that to me. In my mind, I was suddenly six years old again, being reprimanded by my father as I cried. Men didn’t cry, and Stefano Rossi made sure none of his sons grew soft and weak. Growing up, we never had space for emotions. I doubt I even had a single normal conversation with my father where I just asked him about his day.No, definitely not.Stefano’s mantra was always bottle it up and suppress it as much as you can. When I got older, it just got worse. There was no room for your conscience as you killed for the family. I pulled the trigger, I cleaned myself up, and I moved on to another day. Eventually, I got used to it, and I never thought there would come a time when I would need to face it. But then I met Nicki.

“Good morning.”

As if conjured by my thoughts, Nicki walks into the room. I rest down my coffee cup as she takes the seat across from me.

“Good morning.” I ensure that my tone isn’t as stiff as hers. There needs to be one level-headed person in the room. “I made you breakfast.”

“Thank you.” Her voice sounds a little lighter this time. She offers me a slight smile.

Progress.

She pours herself a cup of coffee and starts eating, her eyes peeled on her plate. I watch her with genuine concern. Contrary to what I do for a living, I never did like fighting and avoid it as much as I can, so I find myself with this persistent urge to fix things with her.

“I’m sorry about last night,” I say. “We should’ve never gone to bed without hashing things out.”

“Hashing things out.” She nods slowly. “Is that what we’re doing now?”

“Yes.”

“Which means you’re ready to tell me how you feel, right?”

“I don’t understand why a verbal expression is so important to you,” I reply.

“Oh, here we go again,” she mutters, rolling her eyes.

“Nicki—”

My shrilling cell phone cuts my frustrated response. Reception has the worst timing. Even worse, I see that it’s a call from Stefano.

“Hagens. Now,” he says gruffly before I said a word. The seriousness in his tone tells me I need to get a move on. Something’s going down.

***

We meet at Hagen’s. It’s a bar downtown that’s popular for hosting mafiosos and their bosses, but more importantly, it’s owned by my father and is one of his go-to meeting places aside from the Rossi manor. I drive my Maserati to the meeting with my frustration still fresh from my latest fight with Nicki. I'm shelving my thoughts of her for now. I need to focus on what lies before me. I park my car in the designated parking lot and make my way inside the bar.

Hagen’s has one of those old wooden bar counters with a dozen of wine and spirits displayed behind the bartender. Across from it are tables with off-white tablecloths and small dining lamps. At one side is a line of dining booths with leather cushions and an ornate wallpaper featuring Sicily plastered all over the walls. It’s a classic Italian place, and if walls could talk, I’m willing to bet that these rooms have heard countless of schemes throughout the years.

My father is sitting in one of the booths next to Alessandro, who’s wearing a perpetual smug that reminds me of our last conversation. Does my brother smell a rat? Is that why I’m here?

“You’re just on time,” Stefano announces as he makes an exaggerated sweep of his arm to check his watch. He snaps at the waiter and orders three glasses of whiskey for the table and three servings of steak. It seems like he wants to get straight to business.

“So,” Stefano says. “What do you have for me, Ezio?”

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