Chapter 32 Alessio
ALESSIO
I’ve officially become the kind of guy who checks his phone every five minutes for pictures of his kid building Lego spaceships.
What the hell happened to me?
“Boss, you’re smiling at your phone again,” Katrina says, sliding a scotch across the bar. “It’s disturbing.”
“Mind your own business,” I mutter, but I pocket the phone anyway. She’s right, though – I’ve been checking Nina’s texts like some lovesick teenager. The latest batch shows Austin demolishing her at Jenga, then both of them covered in flour from what looks like a cookie explosion in my kitchen.
Our kitchen. Where my family is making a mess while I’m stuck here watching some college kid gyrate on a pole.
“Never thought I’d see the day,” Katrina continues, clearly enjoying this. “Alessio DeLuca, domesticated.”
“Say that again, and you’re fired.”
She laughs and moves down the bar. At least she knows when to quit.
The truth is, I barely recognize myself these days. Just a few months ago, I lived at this place. Now I’m counting the minutes until I can get home for dinner and bedtime stories. I used to think guys who chose family over freedom were weak. Turns out they just knew something I didn’t.
They knew what they were missing.
I scan the club, noting the usual Friday night chaos. The new girl Starla hired is working a table of polo-wearing douchebags who look like they just stepped off a golf course. Cherry’s making her rounds, and everything looks smooth.
Too smooth.
The door opens, and Joey stumbles in like he’s walking through quicksand.
What the hell is he doing here? We agreed he’d stay deep undercover until he had solid intel. Seeing him here means something went very, very wrong.
One look at his blown pupils and flushed cheeks, and my blood turns to ice. He can barely focus on me as I push through the crowd toward him.
Fuck.
He hits the ground before I can get there. I drop to my knees beside him, pulling his head into my lap. His skin burns like he’s running a fever of a hundred and ten.
“Call an ambulance,” I bark at the nearest bouncer. Under normal circumstances, we’d handle this ourselves and avoid any official involvement, but Joey doesn’t have minutes to spare for protocol. I cradle his head as his eyes roll back. “Joey. Hey, look at me.”
“Drink...” His voice is barely a whisper. “They spiked my drink...”
Son of a bitch.
“Stay with me, kid.” I shake his shoulders, but his eyes are already fluttering shut. Heat radiates off him in waves. Our chemist warned me what Lightning does. Sudden heat. Glassy eyes. The body shorting out. Joey is ticking every box. “Who did this? Give me a name.”
“A...” He struggles with the word, his breathing shallow. “Aron—”
Then the seizure hits.
I roll him on his side, wedge my jacket under his head. His heels drum the floor. A crowd forms, keeping their distance thanks to the bouncers. The bass from the stage keeps thumping like the room does not care that a kid is dying. The ice bucket Katrina brings is useless. We both know it.
I’ve seen death before, caused it more times than I care to count, but watching it take someone this young, someone under my command, makes my hands shake as I try to help him.
In that moment, staring down at Joey’s face, I see Austin. I don’t know why—they look nothing alike—but suddenly all I can think about is my son’s amber eyes and the way he asks me to read just one more chapter before bed.
This kid has a father somewhere. Had a father.
The paramedics arrive, but it’s too late. They pronounce Joey dead at 11:47 p.m.
I fix the time in my head.
Eleven forty-seven.
Someone is going to answer for it.
I want to punch something. Break every bottle behind the bar. Instead, I stand there like a statue while they bag the body and Starla clears out the customers.
Three hours of police questions later, I’m finally dragging myself through my front door. The penthouse is quiet, warm light spilling from the bedroom where Nina’s sketching in bed. She looks up when I appear in the doorway, a sleepy smile on her face that fades the second she sees my expression.
“What’s wrong?”
The simple question breaks something loose in my chest. I cross to the bed and pull her into my arms, burying my face in her neck. She smells like vanilla and pencil shavings and home, and for the first time in hours, I can breathe.
She doesn’t push for answers. Just holds me while I hold her, letting me take what I need. I don’t cry—I don’t know if I even can—but I let myself feel the full weight of Joey’s death for the first time tonight.
When I finally find my voice, everything comes spilling out. I tell her about Lightning and the investigation. About Joey and how I sent him undercover. How young he was, how he trusted me to keep him safe.
Then I get to the part that’s eating me alive.
“When he was dying on that floor, all I could see was Austin,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper. “Watching this kid’s life end before it really started, and suddenly I’m terrified the same thing could happen to my son.”
Nina doesn’t try to tell me it’s not my fault. Just keeps stroking my hair, waiting.
“I can’t understand how...” I start, then stop. Shake my head.
“How what?” she asks gently.
“How any man could just walk away from his kid. I mean, the thought of losing Austin...” I trail off again.
“Did... someone walk away from you?” she asks quietly.
I don’t usually talk about this stuff. Hell, I’ve barely mentioned it to Dario over the years. But Nina makes it easy somehow, and after spilling my guts about Joey, what’s one more secret? Might as well tell her everything.
“My father left when I was seven,” I say. “Just walked out one day when the family business got too real for him.”
Her fingers still in my hair. “Alessio...”
“You know what the worst part was? He didn’t even say goodbye. I came home from school and his closet was empty. My mom had to explain that Daddy wasn’t coming back.” I swallow hard. “I kept his cologne bottle for months, thinking if I saved it, maybe he’d come back for it.”
“I know what that’s like,” Nina says quietly. “Not the same way, but... I used to keep a stuffed rabbit my first foster mom gave me. Moved from house to house with this raggedy old thing, thinking if I took good enough care of it, maybe she’d want me back.”
A pang runs through me at the image of little Nina clinging to that toy. “Did she?”
“No. But I kept that rabbit until it fell apart.” She strokes my hair again. “Sometimes we hold onto things that represent the love we wish we had.”
“My Uncle Lorenzo found me one day, maybe six months later, spraying that cologne on my pillow so I could smell my dad when I went to sleep.” My voice cracks slightly.
“He threw the bottle away and told me real men don’t abandon their families.
But all I really learned that day was that people leave.
So I made sure to never need anyone enough that it would destroy me when they walked away.
Easier to keep things casual than risk feeling like that kid again, waiting for someone who’s never coming back. ”
“God, Alessio. That must have been so hard.” Her voice is soft, full of understanding. “Learning that young that people can just... disappear. Foster care taught me the same thing.” She’s quiet for a moment, then adds, “But you didn’t keep us at arm’s length. You let Austin in. You let me in.”
I take a shaky breath and voice the fear that’s eating at me. “But what if I’m more like my dad than I want to admit? What if when things get hard, I do what he did and just walk away?”
Nina’s quiet for a long moment, then her hand cups my cheek.
“You’re nothing like him. You’ve never given me a single reason to think you’d walk away.
If anything, you don’t give me enough space.
” She gives me a small smile. “You always want to stay and fight for us, even when I’m being difficult.
Your father ran when things got complicated.
You dig your heels in deeper.” Her thumb traces my cheekbone.
“And the way you are with Austin...you stepped up the second you knew about him. I didn’t know your father, but I can’t imagine him ever doing that. .”
I close my eyes and let her words sink in.
For a long moment, we just sit in the quiet. Her thumb traces along my cheekbone, and I focus on breathing. On believing what she just told me.
I never knew I needed this. Never thought I wanted someone to lean on. But having her here, letting me unload all this shit without trying to fix me or make it about her, lifts a weight I didn’t even realize I’d been carrying.
“Are you okay?” she asks when the silence stretches between us.
“Yeah.” My voice comes out rough. “I think I will be.”
We settle into bed, and she tucks herself against me, warm and solid.
She falls asleep quickly, but sleep won’t come for me.
I keep seeing Joey’s face, but somehow it morphs into Austin’s eyes and gap-toothed grin.
The urge to check on my son is almost overwhelming, but waking a six-year-old at this hour just to ease my own mind would be selfish as hell.
My phone buzzes with an email from the PI I hired to look into Nina’s background. I open it carefully, making sure not to disturb her.
I hate digging into her life behind her back. It feels like a betrayal. But if there’s even a chance her past could put her or Austin in danger, I need to know before it blindsides us.
Most of it’s information I already know, but one detail makes me sit up straighter. Nina’s ex-husband didn’t just disappear seven years ago. His body was recently found—and apparently, he was murdered back then.
Dead since right after the night Nina and I first met.
I make a mental note to have the PI dig deeper. If Eric Newell was killed because of his debts or his enemies, that trouble could still find Nina. And if anyone thinks they can hurt what’s mine because of something that bastard did, they’re going to learn just how wrong they are.
But that’s a problem for tomorrow. Tonight, I’m just going to hold my family close and remember what I’m fighting for.
Everything.