Secret Baby For The Italian Mafia Don

Part 2

NICO POV:

All the time you spend in prison, you mostly use it thinking about what
you're going to do when you get out. What greasy fast food you're going to
eat first. What old score you'll settle. Which bitch you're going to fuck.
Even for those of us with no light at the end of the tunnel, we still thought
about that shit.
But then, when some guys did get out, they'd come crawling back. Like
prison was that one drug they just couldn't quit. It was always that same
pathetic tale: they froze up on the outside, too paralyzed by choices to do a
goddamn thing. The freedom they fantasized about day and night behind
bars, it scared them shitless once they got their hands on it. Just dogs
chasing cars.
The world had changed, and they hadn't. It was easier to go back to prison
and be a number than it was to go back to being a person.
For years and years, I heard that shit. Saw it happen time and time again as
ex-cons flunked out of life and fell back into the system.
And now I know, with blood on my knuckles and a man half-conscious at
my feet—I'm not like those dumb pricks.
I'm not paralyzed. My speedometer is in the red. I'm swinging back into the
world like a sledgehammer and I will break anything that gets in my way. If
I have to claw my way back, carve my place out in it with blood and bone,
then I will. No one is taking this from me again.
I'm flying high on fresh freedom and second chances and the bloodlust of a
real fight. Not that prissy, hair-grabbing, hidden-shank shit they pull in the
pen. Spit goes flying from the kid's mouth. They tell me he's the golden boy
of the era, the big alpha dog who has been dominating the ring for months.
His hands scramble against the cage, feet floundering, unable to find grip.
He's too dazed for the most basic instincts, arms outstretched on either side
of him, not even defending his face.
I crack him again, beating the message home: he is in my territory, I am not
in his.
Seven years and the cage hasn't changed. Some of the faces are new, some
of the fighters fresh and young, full of promise just waiting to be broken,
but the cage is just the same. And the crowd wants what it has always
wanted—
Savagery.
God, I still know how to make them sing.
I'm tunnel-visioned, reclaiming my throne, leaving no uncertain doubt
about who owns this pit, when out of the corner of my vision, a cute little
brunette in tight pants and a low-cut top comes shimmying up the cage,
mad as hell.
For a split second, I think it must be this guy's girl, pissed off that she's
going to have to either take it doggy-style for the next three months or try to
get off to a Picasso painting when he has her laid out on her back.
But the second we lock eyes, I know I couldn't be more wrong. The
recognition hits.
Ava St. Clair.
That pimply little runt that used to follow Marcel around, always underfoot
and yelping like a kicked dog. When I knew her, she was barely more than a
kid. She had braces and a nervous smile—a really fucking unfortunate
combination—and not a backbone anywhere to be found. So how in the
name of puberty did she turn into this? A curvy little viper with a wolf-cut
and a temper, barking orders at men twice her size.
The crowd screams every insult in the book at her, but Ava doesn't flinch.
Her eyes are only on me, and mine—hell, I can't pull them off her.
I'm not a man easily rendered speechless, but before either of us can
wrestle with our surprise, two thick arms wrap around Ava's waist and haul
her down, kicking and thrashing. The security man screams at her and
chucks her into the angry crowd, like chumming the waters.
"Hey!" I yell, slamming up against the cage, but it's too late. Ava goes
spilling into the hands of a few dozen pissed-off psychopaths already keyed
up on bloodshed. They rip her back into the crowd immediately, the sharks
swarming to feast.
I push out of the cage door and jump into the fray.
Ava twists violently as men rip at her hair and grab at her shirt. She tries
and fails to push them away, swinging as she's swarmed on all sides. She
keeps fighting, even when she's taken off her feet, kicking and twisting.
The sport changes when one of the men gets her around the legs and starts
pulling at her jeans.
I surge into the crowd, ready to fight them all off bare-handed.
"Get the fuck off her!"
I throw one clean punch and the fucker goes down like a bowling pin,
taking out a couple of the men standing nearest to him. My presence alone
has most of them startled, backing off, but some are slow to catch on,
caught up in the mob mentality with their hands already on her. I fight them
off, punching and pulling and throwing them to the ground. There is a new
main event now, and those not involved whoop and whistle as if it's just
another match. I'm a single wolf surrounded by a pack of dogs,
outnumbered but not outmatched.
I clothesline one of the men over the barrier, then take another off his feet.
He smacks his head against the concrete and doesn't get up again. The
cowards clear out fast once the odds turn, once they are dealing with more
than just a defenseless girl barely weighing a hundred pounds.
I circle Ava, daring another fucker to step up and try his hand.
Finally, it's just me and her, surrounded by a semi-circle of onlookers
giving us a wide berth.
We're both breathing hard. I watch the peripheral, waiting for someone to
get his pride hurt and try a sucker punch. But out of the corner of my vision,
it's Ava who rushes one of the men. The one who had his hands on her
jeans. She charges at him, a feral scream on her lips, ready to rip him apart.
I get her around the waist first. I hoist her up over my shoulder. She doesn't
weigh a thing, even as she screams and tries to claw her way back to him.
I push through the crowd, forcing my way through, ignoring the dozens of
words being thrown at us. Some are congratulatory, some welcome me
back, some are outraged that I would spoil the fun. I ignore it all, my grip
iron on the squirming girl.
I take a private exit, the one reserved for the staff and the fighters, where we
won't be followed—leave the hapless fucking security to clean up the mess
they created. We emerge into a dimly lit stairwell leading up to the staff
rooms and the VIP levels.
"Easy, kid. Easy. I've got you," I tell her.
I sit her down on the steps. I kneel down and put us almost eye to eye. She's
breathing hard, her mouth a bloodied smirk. It's a look I've seen in the ring
before, and I've seen it behind bars, too.
She gathers her breath like she's coming down off a high, adrenaline
crashing, blood dripping off her chin from a split lip. It looks good on her.
"Goddamn little psycho," I mutter, taking Ava by the jaw to hold her steady
and get a look at the damage. I scrub my thumb against the wound, swiping
off the blood.
"You're not supposed to be here," she says, all accusatory, like she's still
pissed at me.
"Sounds like an awful lot of syllables for 'thank you, Nico,'" I say. "I must
have misheard."
She barely gives me a shrug, much less a thank you.
"If you wanted thanks, you could have spared yourself the bruises. How are
you out?"
"I was a model inmate. A paragon of rehabilitation. A real fucking testament
to the virtues of the correctional system."
Ava gives me a long, disgusted stare at my lying, then turns away to pull off
her shirt. Someone tossed their beer over her. Utterly shameless, she tosses
it aside, leaving herself in just a skimpy bra with blood seeping into the
white lace; it drips from her lip and carves a path toward that deep cleavage.
My eyes follow it—from one place I want to put my mouth to the next.
She doesn't even blush.
Damn, she's different than I remember. Can this really be the girl who was
afraid of her own shadow? She'd jump when toast popped out of a toaster,
her cheeks always like some off-brand Crayola color, Perpetually Pink.
Fresh from the clutches of a dozen men in this lawless hellhole, how is
there no fear in those eyes? I take her by the jaw, force her to look at me.
There's something off in that bold, reckless expression. Like dark matter,
swallowing all the light. Something twisted up and broken. I grin in the face
of that cold look. I'd like to sink my teeth into it, just to see how it fucking
tastes. We're so close, my words ghost against her lips.
"It's a cute act, sweetheart, but you were about to get spread out and
stripped down under a dozen different men. We both know what they
would've done with you. The humiliating, ugly game they would have
made of it if they'd gotten the chance. Now stop being a little freak for two
seconds and let me see if they hurt you."
Ava huffs, but she doesn't stop me.
"What do you care?" she asks as I start checking her over.
I ignore the question and reach for her arm. I search for bruises or breaks in
case the adrenaline is keeping her numb. She's scratched up here and there,
but it's not too bad. Not like I thought it'd be when I saw her get swallowed
up by that crowd.
I feel my way along each limb, my rough hands running along her soft skin.
Fuck, I'd forgotten how soft women are. How warm.
"I'm fine, Nico."
"Yeah, you fucking are," I mutter, slowly sliding my hands around her tight
little ribcage, just under those full tits straining against her bra. She goes
stiff and still, her breath frozen as I scrape my thumb against the side of her
breast. "Couldn't help but notice it myself. When did that happen?"
"You want me to take my pants off, too?" she whispers in the same tone,
fucking with me. "Feel around in my panties? Maybe I sprained my pussy.
You better check."
"Goddamn," I breathe, so close now that our foreheads almost touch, her
eyes boring into mine. "What did they do to you, pretty girl?" I mutter,
scrubbing my thumb against her jaw. "What happened to you while I was
gone?"
Her eyes glitter, her breaths going still as I call out her bullshit for the
damage that it is. For one naked moment, the truth is written into her
expression.
The silence lingers, stretches too long.
Where are those clever little retorts now?
Somewhere in the New York underground, the subway blazes through,
rattling the room. The light overhead sways and flickers, the whole world
trembling around us. My eyes drop to her softly parted lips. I'm so close, I
could lick that blood right off them. Grab her by the hair and shove my
tongue between her teeth.
I bet that icy expression would melt under my heat, bet I could latch onto
Ava's pain and suck it out of her like a poison. I lean in, only for her small
hand to come up and press against my chest, keeping us apart a few
precious centimeters.
"Nothing you can fix," she finally answers. The subway passes, brings the
moment to a sudden stillness and silence.
Ava pushes away from me and stands up, running from the intimacy of the
moment like something has finally got her spooked. I lick my lips at the
thought of that. Being the thing that makes her run.
"I still don't understand how you're here."
"Mysteries of the universe. Some things are just better left unknown."
She glares at me, those eyes still shadowed with distrust.
"I need to go find Frankie," she says. "She'll be worried, if she's not
already breaking somebody's kneecaps over all this."
"Yeah? You gonna walk back out there with your tits out, give everybody a
round two?"
She frowns, but she doesn't have another solution.
"Come on. I got something for you."
I bring Ava back into the changing rooms with me. After all this time, seven
years, there's still a locker with my name on it. So far, that's the closest
thing that's felt like home. In here, it's just the two of us. The fights are
over, half the lights already shut off for the night.
I strip down out of my shorts, underwear and all. Ava reels away with a
furious, breathy, "Jesus Christ!" as I strip naked without warning.
"Glad to know something still gets a reaction out of you."
She says nothing, crossing her arms and facing away from me. I'd bet
money she's glaring into the other side of the room, hoping I don't see the
heat turning the back of her ears pink. I toss my shirt over her head.
"Put that on."
She doesn't say anything, but I hear the rustle of fabric.
"So, why'd you climb up onto the cage?" I ask as we dress, back-to-back.
"Because you were going to kill him."
"I wasn't gonna kill him."
Well, maybe I would have killed him. Hindsight and the moment are two
different beasts, and one of them is harder to tame. "That your problem, if
he dies?"
"It's the family's problem."
"The family," I say, rolling the word on my tongue. Those traitorous fucks. I
fasten my belt and turn around. Ava has my shirt tied into a crop top,
showing off her midriff and somehow making an oversized tee look sexy.
My gaze lingers. I roll the thought of what she might taste like over my
tongue. Can't shake it.
When I got out, I figured I'd pay off the first whore I saw. Take her right in
the back of some alley. You're not picky about pussy when you haven't had
any in half a decade. Really fucks with your standards. But now, standing
here with Ava, wrapped up in her fucked-up web...I don't think some
random whore is going to do it for me at all.
"Thanks, Nico," she finally says, even if she can't look at me while saying
it.
"You think I'm done with you?" I ask, sensing the finality in her statement.
Like I'm just gonna let her walk away from me. "I'll take you back home."
"You can't," she says. "I still live at the house."
"So what?"
"So...isn't that why you're not there? Why you haven't visited? Aren't you
hiding out from Salvatore?"
I grin at that bold, bewildered assumption. The girl's got it all wrong. I inch
in closer, put my hands on those hips and pull her right up against me.
"Do I look like I'm hiding?" I ask lowly.
She stares up at me, speechless and finally flustered as we are body to body.
Even she can't hide that. She tests my grip, trying to step back. I meet her
step for step, get her pinned right up against the locker.
"You and me, pretty girl. We're going home."
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