Secret Baby For The Italian Mafia Don

Part 26

AVA POV:

I have changed my mind. Nico Mori is not going to be the death of me; it
will be the other way around—I am going to be the death of him. Foolishly,
I thought the best chance that I could give him was to stay as far away as
possible. I cut him out, pushed him away, blocked him as best I could.
I thought if I did all that then maybe, just maybe, I could spare him.
But Nico won't spare himself.
In the middle of the night, in the pitch black, with my fiancé right there and
Nico's neck already in the noose—he sneaks in and pleasures me. It's the
most agonizing and pleasureful thing I think I've ever experienced—lying
there frozen under him, knowing that if I utter a single sound, if I move just
the wrong way, the whole world will implode. I lie mute and trembling
while the most intense sensation of my life blisters through my belly, like
being burned alive and told not to scream.
Nico's clever tongue is the only thing that has felt good in days.
When Thaddeus is at work, everything is almost normal. I manage to have
my first doctor's appointment, where everything goes smoothly. I swap my
prenatal pills into bottles of women's multivitamins and menstrual pain
relievers, where they will go untouched. I keep myself busy, always going
out with Tessa or planning for the wedding. Salvatore has decided I should
be married within the month, another deterrent against Nico. My swelling
breasts and bulging tummy agree with him. The sooner, the better.
Thaddeus hasn't slept with me yet.
He's tried. Each time, I have insisted I want to wait until marriage, and
though he tells me there are more ways to have sex than just intercourse, I
pretend to be blushing and inexperienced, and not ready for any of it.
It makes him impatient, and he doesn't understand what the practical
difference is between sleeping together now and sleeping together in a few
weeks. I tell him that it would just make me more comfortable, that I want
to know the marriage is a sure thing before I give up a significant portion of
my value. Only putting it in slimy business terms makes him back off and
see the sense in my decision.
Luckily for me, he stays busy with work and often comes home drunk.
I get the impression that most of his job isn't as much practical work as
much as it is brown-nosing. Meeting the right people, making the right
connections, doing the right favors. Most of his business happens in bars or
around dinner tables. He is just another rung on the mafia ladder,
connecting the wires and cogs together that hold up the machine and keep it
running.
But no matter how many meetings he takes, we have dinner with the
immediate family every night. He insists on it. And every night, night after
night, Thaddeus sweet-talks Salvatore and Marcel, always talking business,
both practical and family. I swear, if he wasn't so interested in getting in my
panties, I would think maybe Thaddeus had a thing for Sal instead, and
Contessa should be the one who's worried.
But one thing they do agree on, over wine and steak, is that the house is
much more pleasant without Nico in it. I feel the knowing look that Tessa
and Cecilia give me, and I grumpily stab my fork into my steak, keep my
eyes down, and hold my tongue.
Cecilia corners me one afternoon when I am changing out the baby's
laundry downstairs—as much as a lady in a wheelchair can corner
somebody, when all I would have to do is put a staircase between me and
her to escape her interrogation.
"I presume you have a plan," she says.
"I don't know what you're talking about," I say, feigning indifference as I
fold laundry into the basket.
"You may be able to pull the wool over Thaddeus's eyes—a dangerous
gamble in and of itself—but do you really think Nico won't connect the
dots?"
"I never said Nico had anything to do with my baby," I say in calm,
measured whispers, refusing to look at her as I snappily fold the clothes and
pretend like everything is fine. Her silence is judging and grating, until it
finally frays my nerves as she sits there and just stares at me.
"I am doing Nico a favor!" I insist. "I'm trying to keep him alive!"
"So am I. Which is why I need to insist that doing him a favor would be
taking care of this problem, now," she says. "If you think he's reckless now,
he will kill himself trying to get to you and the child. Even if it wasn't his,
he would never believe it. You think they won't do the math? How much
longer do you think you can get away with it?"
I glance down into the laundry, the tiny pile of minuscule socks and pastel
onesies, which hurt just to look at for too long.
The image of Nico swirling Emma around in his arms plays behind my eyes
again. I can't shake it. I can't imagine doing this without him. Childbirth,
sleepless nights, and first words and fussy tantrums—how can I do all of
that without him there? Letting my baby be raised by someone like
Thaddeus Mori, who will probably use it as another prop to get into another
club and slide another dollar into his bank account. An asset.
The thought makes me see red, because I can't be sure Nico isn't doing the
exact same thing. I sling down a onesie into the basket without folding it,
emotion washing over me like a wave that rolls over your head.
"I just want it to work out," I say, the pain warbling in my voice as tears
threaten to come. I've been so goddamn weepy lately. Even Thaddeus
might be second-guessing this agreement with just how emotional I've
been, snapping at him one moment and then locking myself in the bathroom
to cry the next. Last night, it was because I ordered fries with extra salt, and
then decided they were too salty. I cried for half an hour over the sink. The
rational part of my brain stood by with her arms crossed, self-aware and
refusing to help.
"You more than anyone should know that sometimes, things simply don't
work out."
Her words cut so deep they don't even hurt. There are no nerve endings
where that knife plunges. I stare at her, but I see my own desperation
mirrored back at me. The need to save him.
"Why do you care so much about what happens to Nico?" I mutter, wiping
furiously at my leaky eyes.
"Because I raised him," she sighs through her nose, as if annoyed with her
own reasoning, "and as much as he tries to prove me wrong, I am
convinced there is something in him worth saving."
Does she think that I don't agree with her? That I don't care for him?
I don't even know when it started, when Nico slipped from taking over my
body and my mind, to taking over my heart instead. But he's there now.
Where I thought there was no room left for anyone, Nico tore his way in
and started rearranging my heart just like he did the rest of my life, tearing
out the old and making room for himself in its place. But Vinny, he left
untouched. On a high pedestal, a dusty box somewhere just within reach.
"If you raised him, then you know what he's like better than anyone. Is
he..." I sigh, hating that I have to even ask the question. I don't know if I
can trust Cecilia to tell me the truth. "Is he ever going to get bored with
this? With me? Will he ever just...move on, if things don't work out the
way that he wants?"
"Never."
Cecilia answers me, full of grim certainty, as if that is the worst of the two
possibilities.
"You think he would want the baby?" I ask.
Her silence fills me with uncertainty.
"Do you know him at all?" she finally asks, as if I have asked the stupidest
question in the world. But I heard him myself.
I turn away from her, feeling shame and embarrassment creep up my neck.
"I know enough to know better than to trust him," I tell her. "But if there's
something in Nico worth saving, then there's something in his baby worth
saving. I'm keeping it. No matter what happens, with or without him, and
whether the family likes it or not. And to answer your question, no. I don't
have a plan. I don't have a single goddamn idea what I'm doing, but I know
what I'm not doing, and that's getting rid of my baby."
Without waiting for the old woman to try to convince me again, I stomp my way out of the room.

Words 1525