Chapter 38 Alessio
ALESSIO
The hospital coffee tastes like shit, but I drink it anyway.
Anything to keep my hands busy while my son’s heart gets carved open and my woman sits in some interrogation room getting grilled by cops for God knows what.
Funny thing about hospitals—they’re supposed to be places of healing, but all I can think about is death. Joey’s death. Austin’s potential death if this surgery goes wrong. The death I’m going to rain down on whoever’s responsible for putting my family in danger.
“You’re wearing a hole in the floor,” Keshia says from her chair by the window. She’s been watching me pace for the last twenty minutes, probably wondering if I’m going to lose my shit completely.
“Surgery could take hours,” she continues, voice gentle but firm. “And you pacing around like you’re about to murder someone isn’t going to make it go faster.”
I stop moving. “What’s your point?”
“My point is that Nina needs you more than Austin does right now. He’s got the best cardiac surgeon in the city working on him. She’s got your fancy lawyer, sure, but she needs you there too.”
She’s right, and I hate that she’s right. I’ve been standing here feeling helpless when I could be down there making sure she’s okay. And if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s taking care of what’s mine.
“There’s a guard outside,” I tell her, already reaching for my jacket. “I’m sending him in to keep watch.”
“I don’t need—”
“But you’re getting one anyway.” I pause. “Text me the second anything changes.”
She rolls her eyes and mutters something about “bossy assholes.”
Donald King meets me at the front desk of the police station, straightening his tie like he’s about to devour someone’s firstborn. The Andretti family lawyer doesn’t lose cases, mainly because he fights dirtier than the prosecutors ever expect.
“Your girl’s got bigger balls than most of my clients,” he says by way of greeting. “She’s been smart about what she says, but they’re pushing hard.”
“What’s the situation?”
“They’ve got weak, circumstantial evidence so far, but they’re running with it. They think she murdered her ex.”
I almost laugh. Nina, a killer? The woman who apologizes to spiders before relocating them outside?
“Can you get me in there?”
“Already handled. You’ve got five minutes before they realize you’re not my junior associate.”
I don’t know what strings he pulled or what favors he called in, but ten minutes later I’m led into an attorney-client conference room with the cameras off. Nina sits with her back straight, hands folded, looking like she’s waiting for a job interview instead of facing a murder charge.
She looks up as I take the chair, and for a split second her mask slips. I see the fear underneath, the bone-deep terror she’s been hiding behind that calm facade.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she says, voice steady but eyes giving her away. “Austin—”
“Is still in surgery. Keshia’s got it covered.” I take the chair across from her, close enough to see the exhaustion in her face. “Talk to me.”
She’s quiet for so long I start to wonder if she’s going to shut down completely. Then she finally speaks.
“They think I killed Eric.”
The way she says it—flat, matter-of-fact, like she’s commenting on the weather—sets off every alarm bell in my head. I’m glad King made sure the cameras were off for this conversation.
“...Did you?”
Her eyes meet mine, and I see the moment she decides to trust me with the truth that could destroy everything.
“Yes.”
What the fuck?
My jaw hangs open as something cold slithers under my skin.
I don’t know if anything could have surprised me more. I stare at her, trying to process what she just said. Nina actually killed someone. The same woman who cries at commercials for the animal shelter and who’s devoted her life to protecting her son.
“Tell me what happened.”
She takes a shaky breath. “It wasn’t planned. This was a few months after you and I slept together, after that night we met. I was pregnant, and Eric called saying he finally had my money for my half of the house. The check he’d been promising since the divorce.”
Her hands shake as she talks, and I reach across the table to take them in mine.
“I should have known better than to go alone. But I needed that money. When I got there, he was drunk. Mean drunk, the way he used to get during our marriage.” Her voice cracks, all pretense of calm gone.
“I couldn’t let him hit me, not when I was carrying Austin.
So when he came at me, calling me names, slapping me around.
.. I ran to the kitchen. I just wanted to scare him with the knife, make him back off. But he wouldn’t stop.”
I can picture it perfectly. Nina, pregnant and terrified, facing down that piece of shit who’d already proven he had no problem hurting her.
"The knife went into his chest," she whispers.
"He looked so surprised. Then he just...
collapsed." Her voice breaks and she takes a shaky breath.
"There was so much blood, Alessio. I kept waiting for him to get back up, to come after me again, but he didn't move.
I was so scared I could barely think straight, but I made myself check for a pulse.
" She swallows hard. "There was nothing. "
I squeeze her hands tighter. “You did what you had to do. Where did you put him?”
“Under the shed foundation. I thought...” She swallows hard. “I thought no one would ever find him.”
“But they did.”
“A developer bought the whole block. Tore everything down.” Her hands shake. “Alessio, what if I go to prison? What happens to Austin?”
The fear in her voice ignites something primitive and violent in my chest. Prison? Over defending herself and my son against a piece of shit who deserved everything he got?
Not fucking likely.
“You’re not going anywhere,” I tell her, meaning every word. “You did what you had to do to protect yourself and our kid. Anyone with half a brain will see that.”
And fuck, part of me is proud of her for it. She was pregnant, scared, alone, and she still found the strength to fight back. To protect what was ours before I even knew it existed. That’s the mother of my child, the woman I love. A survivor.
A knock on the door cuts our time short. I stand, leaning down to brush a kiss across her forehead.
For a second I let myself breathe with her, and the weight of it all hits me so hard I have to close my eyes.
I let the feeling hang for one breath, then cork it away and put my game face on.
“Don’t say another word to them,” I murmur against her skin. “Let King handle the legal shit. I’ll handle everything else.”
Outside the station, I’m already dialing Shaw before I reach my car.
“I need everything you can find on Sheriff Dearborn,” I bark when he picks up. “Bank records, internet history, phone calls, who he’s fucking, who he owes money to. Everything.”
“How fast do you need it?”
“Yesterday.”
“Consider it done.”
I hang up and stare at the police station through my windshield. Nina's scared shitless that the system is going to crush her for killing a piece of shit who deserved what he got.
But she's not helpless. She's got me.
And by the time I’m done, Sheriff Dearborn is going to wish he’d left well enough alone.