Secret Baby For The Italian Mafia Don

Part 6

NICO POV:

In the old dining hall, the Mori blood family gathers around an antique
table. Noontime sun tints the windows white, breathes some life into the
room. It's a quick turnaround time. I thought Salvatore would push this
meeting off for as long as possible, late into the evening, as he scrambled to
make a counterplay and get to the root of my release.
The way I see it, there's one of two options. Either Sal meant it when he
said he wasn't going to fight me—no chance—or he already has something
up his sleeve. Some left hook that's going to come out of the dark. I pace
restlessly as everyone else files in. I can't be still, suspicion running quick
through my blood, fueling me past the sleeplessness weighing down my
limbs.
I haven't dealt with Sal as a don before, and I have a feeling
underestimating him would be a dangerous mistake.
I'm greeted with handshakes and nods of respect as the family joins around
the table. Some eyes regard me warmly, knowing. Others have tight-lipped
smiles of uncertainty, their respect going only as far as it has to. Some, I
hardly even know who they are, and that makes me uneasy. The kids have
grown up while I've been gone.
Everyone takes a seat, finds their proper place among the ranks. Not me. I
pace, restless and waiting.
Someone is wheeled into the room in a wheelchair, and I double-take,
nearly jumping out of my skin at the sight.
"Jesus fuck," I snap as the withered old woman looks up at me from her
seat. Cecilia Mori regards me, tight-lipped, looking like some living
taxidermy project. Everyone said she was on her deathbed when I last saw
the old crow, and that was over half a decade ago.
"I thought you were dead. Hell, I'm not sure you aren't."
"It's a pleasant surprise to see you too, Nico," she says, holding out a hand
that could feature in an anatomy book. We shake, and I feel those brittle,
bird-like bones under my palm. The slightest pressure and I think she'd
crumble into dust. The old bitch is my great-aunt and the closest thing I
ever had to a mother after mine died.
My father raised me—but he raised me into a don. A mafia man.
The woman in that chair is the one who raised the kid.
A handshake doesn't feel like enough, but goddamn, I don't know if she'd
survive anything else. A hug might put her in the grave. Looking at her too
long makes my skin crawl. It's uncomfortable on some deep instinctual
level. She's too close to a corpse. You can't look at her without being
reminded of death, like he's standing right there over her shoulder.
She's wheeled up to her place at the table and her attendee shrinks back to a
corner of the room.
When Salvatore enters, the room falls into a hush. Everyone stands. So
much respect for a sheer presence. It sets my teeth on edge. Behind him,
Marcel really has the balls to step into this room with the rest of us.
I bite out an insulted laugh.
"One of these things is not like the others," I say, singsong and low,
prowling in the back of the room while everyone else stands at attention.
"One of these things doesn't belong."
"Marcel will wait outside for now," Salvatore says, interrupting my
taunting, "but in a few minutes, I'm going to have him join us." Salvatore
sits, and the rest of the room follows suit. For me, he gestures to the seat at
his right. The one Marcel would have taken.
What the hell are they planning?
Salvatore opens up the meeting by welcoming me back. He makes half an
effort to even sound like he means it. So generous. When we smile at each
other, it's with the pure certainty that neither of us would really mind if the
other died.
"Nico has requested a meeting of the blood family," Sal says, gesturing to
the table. "I'll let him speak his case."
I lean back, glancing around the table and silently counting heads.
Like politics, most decisions in a family like this are already made before
anybody sits down to vote. The outcome is already decided in some shady
backroom where the power resides. But my case isn't won just yet. I have a
few friends here—men who know what they stand to gain from my control,
who had better positions when I was in charge—but a few aren't going to
cut it.
"It's not my case," I say tersely. "It's our case."
I gesture to the people sitting around the table. "When our father was don,
being blood family meant everything. You all were the top dogs. Even when
I was just a kid, I knew who ran things. I knew who you didn't mouth off
to, who you looked away from when you passed them in the hall. Because
you had that kind of respect. Being family, real family, meant something.
So what the fuck happened?" I ask, glancing around the table at the people
sitting there.
"How did we get so many outsiders taking up roles that should be going to
our own kin? Hell, do you even know who takes the reins if something
happens to Sal? God forbid, of course." I grin. "But the next descendant is
in diapers and the right-hand man isn't even one of our own. I'm requesting
the family appoint me as the underboss, and we start putting things back in
their rightful place, how they should have been all along."
Salvatore cuts in smoothly, "You all know Marcel, as you know the respect
he's earned through his years of service to you all. But sometimes, as Nico
says, service isn't enough. To amend his point—and I do agree that he has
one—we've taken steps to bring Marcel into the family properly. Before
you make any decisions, you should be aware that Marcel's sister, Ava, is
arranged to marry Thaddeus Mori."
There's some reaction to the news, some ripple that runs through the room.
Approval, disapproval—it doesn't matter. I can't hear it. I'm reeling, off
balance, my own thoughts a freight train, fueled by flame and dark as soot.
Ava.
I was looking for the left hook, and he hit me with a right.
I look down and realize my hands are fists.
"Last night, Nico told us he was concerned about Marcel's unofficial place
in the family, and Ava happens to be in a good position for a marriage. The
union will make the family stronger, more whole. Marcel and Ava have
been two of us for a long time now, and it's past time that we recognized
that in an official capacity. Thaddeus and Ava have my blessing."
I'm not listening to the spiel, to all the double meanings Salvatore is laying
on thick. Suddenly, I don't give a damn about Marcel. I don't care which
chair I sit in, who or what I'm in charge of managing around here now.
There's only one thought that has my head in a vise—Ava belongs to me.
I had the girl under my thumb for just one night. That was all it took to
know that I want her under the rest of me.
Paranoia seeps through my thoughts, sends me spiraling down deep rabbit
holes of what-ifs.
Does the girl just get off on thwarting me, so much so that she's willing to
wad her whole future up and dunk it into the trash if it means I don't get
what I want? From stealing my keys straight to stealing my position within
the family...the girl moves quick, I'll give her that.
But something about it itches at the back of my skull.
Ava faced down the barrel of a gun with a glower and tried to go toe to toe
with a crowd of men twice her size. So why the hell would she let herself be
pushed around like a little pawn on somebody else's chess board?
Maybe Salvatore wasn't the one I should have worried about
underestimating.
I barely hear the rest of the meeting. The room swims in opinions, the
family giving relentless back-and-forths, prattling off their pointless
concerns like the peasantry that finally has the attention of the king. I don't
care now. I don't give a fuck. I called the damn meeting and I can barely
hear it, can't listen to anything that isn't the possessive howl itching under
my skin.
Of all the things I thought were going to get in my way, I never thought it'd
be her.
Someone is talking to me, the words landing like leaves on the surface of a
lake, while I'm down here at the bottom, drowning.
I push back my chair, bringing everyone to a surprised hush.
"Nico?"
"You've wasted enough of my time already, Sal," I growl. "I don't have any
more to give you. We'll all end up back here again once you realize this is a
Band-Aid on a fucking bullet hole."
I march out the door, leaving the circus and its grinning clowns behind.
Cecilia and I catch each other's gazes as I go, her eyes glimmering
shrewdly as she tries to read me. I ignore the stare and put the room behind
me. My path runs straightforward and steady. I reach Ava's room, the plain
dark door at the end of the hall. The doorknob twists in my grip, and this
time, I open her bedroom up. The bed is half-made, the TV paused.
She's not here.
From the shelves overhead, I'm watched by the dead button eyes of a few
dusty stuffed animals.
I step into her space, curious.
There's a downturned picture on the nightstand, and glass shards scatter as I
lift it up. It's a picture of her and Vincent Mori. Ava hides half her face from
the camera, peeking up from his shoulder and blushing hot, while Vincent
laughs and takes the selfie. The cracked glass spiderwebs across their faces,
and a stain darkens the picture's corner, like it laid in something.
I chuck the glass shards into the trash bin next to her desk.
I dig through her dresser drawers, open up her closet. There's a heap of old
clothes piled up at the bottom. Frumpy, oversized sweaters and skirts. The
kind of clothes she was wearing in that picture.
Suddenly, the closet door snaps shut in front of me. Ava wedges herself
between me and the door. The girl's dressed in nothing more than a skimpy
set of pink PJs, silky short-shorts that show her thighs and a tight little tank
top cupping her breasts. A basket of laundry spills across the floor in the
doorway.
"What the hell are you doing in my room?" she demands, trying to push me
back.
She can't move me an inch.
I push her back this time, and she bumps the door, no space left between us.
"I just heard the happy news, Ava, and I'm here to give you my
congratulations. You know, I've never seen anybody fuck up their life so
fast before. Some kind of speed run world record you just set. And trust me,
where I've been, I've seen some fucked-up, corner-painted, pathetic
motherfuckers."
"Get out."
"I bet you, Sal, and Marcel think you're all so fucking clever, don't you?" I
ask, ignoring the way her hands try to hold me back, the way her shoulders
pin flat against the door. "So, whose idea was it?"
"That's none of your business."
"Oh, it is my business. You are my business. You thought I was just gonna
play with you for one night, then let you go just like that? You thought that
was all you were worth? A few hours of my attention until I had something
better to do? Is your opinion of yourself so fucking low you could trip on
it?"
"Get off!"
"You better stop pushing away the only person in this house trying to help
you. Tell me who made the deal."
She glares at me through those shaggy bangs, the cut on her lip now just a
little crescent-moon sliver.
"I made the deal! I agreed to it! What else does it matter?"
"It matters because somebody's using you. They'll ruin your life, and for
what? I don't stop, Ava. They're gonna learn that, just like you're gonna
learn that, pretty girl," I mutter, running my thumb over her cheek and not
letting her pull away. "This sets me back a step, maybe two. You're getting
signed away for life. You'll have some fat fuck's little prick crammed
between your legs every night, his body sweating on yours. Is that worth it?
Throwing away your whole future, just so your big bro can feel important
for a few more weeks?"
She laughs. Of all the reactions, I didn't expect that icy little sound, like a
cold dagger.
"You can't look past your ego for two seconds, can you?" she breathes. "I
didn't accept this because of you. You're not that important. Maybe Marcel
and Sal would find some other way to deal with you if they had to, or
maybe they wouldn't. But I did this for my brother, and I did this for me."
I search her face, looking for some kind of clue in those hazel eyes and their
ten thousand colors. What could they have possibly offered this girl? What
would she have agreed to take in exchange for that?
"You keep wondering what's wrong with me," she says, searching me in the
same moment that I'm searching her. "But what the fuck is wrong with
you? What made you like this?"
"Nothing made me. I just am. And I know what I want."
"No, you don't." She slips out from under me, going to gather her laundry
off the floor. "Now get out of my room, Nico, before I really make you
regret this."
"I already told you once, and I made myself very clear—I don't share."
"Here. You want a fucking souvenir to remember me by?" she asks,
throwing a thong at me. The scrap of black cloth bounces off my chest and
drops onto the floor. I step over it, marching right toward her, but she
expects it, meets me midway.
"I fucking warned you," she says, bringing us body to body. It freezes me in
the moment as she takes charge. She has to stand on her tiptoes just to
whisper close to my ear. "You want to really go crazy over something,
Nico?" she asks, soft and daring, our hips almost grinding together from the
proximity. "My husband, whoever the fuck he is, and his 'little prick?'
They're going to take my virginity."
She drops away from me, stares up at me with those wild eyes, and turns
back to her laundry. She starts gathering it back into the basket again. She
slings it into the corner as I watch her.
"But you and V..."
"No, not me and V," she says, cutting me off before I can ask. Her eyes
burn as she looks at me again, her mouth stretched into a painful, ironic
smile that seethes with hatred. I don't know if it's for her or for me. "I never
let him." She laughs. "I was afraid that it would hurt."
She stomps out of the room, leaving me standing there alone with her clean
laundry and her old stuffed animals.
"It will," I yell after her, but she doesn't turn around.
She just yells back,
"Good."

Words 2639