Chapter Fourteen
Nico
I pull up to my father’s house just before dinner and cut the engine.
The property is walled-in, private. High stone, iron gate, cameras tucked where you won’t notice them unless you know to look. Lights set low along the drive. Everything designed to keep people out and keep us in.
I don’t see the security, which means they’re doing their job right.
The main house sits deep on the lot, wide and solid, all pale stone and dark trim and warm window light that makes it look inviting.
The main house sits back from the road like a fortress dressed up as a home. Pale stone, dark trim, big windows glowing warm. Expensive landscaping that never looks fussy. Nothing out of place. Nothing left to chance.
All just the way my father built it nearly thirty years ago, when it was just him and my mother.
Until recently, I lived here. Not in the house—out back, in the pool house. Back when my father was still in prison, the house felt too big and too empty, but the property was quiet.
Then he got out. Then he married Elena. Then baby Alessandra came along, and the house filled up. I moved into my own place because I like my privacy and my quiet, and I don’t apologize for it.
I can love my family and still need space from them.
I open the door and step out, gravel crunching under my shoes. The air smells like cut grass and summer heat, the kind that clings to the back of your neck. Somewhere beyond the wall, life is happening, but it might as well be a different world.
I adjust my cuffs out of habit, then stop because I’m not going into a meeting. It’s Sunday dinner with the family.
The front door opens before I knock. One of the staff members greets me. No small talk because they know me.
Warmth hits me the moment I cross the threshold.
Not just the temperature—sound, too. Voices overlapping.
A burst of laughter. The clink of dishes.
The house is alive tonight, and for a second I pause like I’m bracing for impact.
I’m always conflicted in that way. I love my family, and I love gathering with them, but I have my limits.
Then I step in, and let the door shut behind me.
The house smells like garlic and wine and a mix of colognes I recognize.
The living room opens up wide and bright with warm lamps. Voices overlap in a way that feels familiar instead of chaotic. Somebody laughs, somebody talks over them, and nobody cares because this is how it always is when we’re all in the same house.
Antonio is on the couch instead of pacing like he usually does, one arm held a little too carefully against his side. The shot did more than leave a scar. It slowed him down. He sees me and lifts two fingers in greeting.
Vito is across from him, half turned toward Caterina, hands moving as he talks. Caterina sits on the armchair, legs crossed, expression unimpressed in the way only she can pull off. She sees me and gives me a look that’s equal parts hello and where have you been.
“Finally,” she says, like I’m late on purpose, but her eyes soften for a second when they land on me.
I shake my head and step farther in, the corner of my mouth tugging up despite myself. “Good to see you too,” I say, and it comes out easy. Then my gaze shifts toward the hall as Bianca walks from the direction of the kitchen with a tray in her hand.
My Uncle Gio is right there to swoop it out of her hands before she’s taken a step into the room. She directs him to a table on the side, and a couple of staffers with more trays follow.
Bianca wipes her hands on a dish towel like she’s been in motion for hours. She looks tired, but it’s the good kind of tired. The kind that comes from feeding people you love.
Gio’s hand finds the small of her back for a second, steadying her as she shifts the tray, and she leans into him without thinking.
Voices pull my attention down the hall. Footsteps. A softer laugh I recognize as Elena’s. Then my father appears with Elena beside him. A small ball of energy with dark hair and big blue eyes lets out a squeal and barrels toward me with her arms lifted high.
I drop my keys into my pocket and crouch fast, arms opening before she reaches me.
She hits me with the full force of her little body, hands grabbing for my shirt, laughter bubbling out of her like she’s been saving it up.
I catch her under the arms and lift her, and she squeals again, legs kicking, face bright.
“Hey, bambina,” I say into her hair. She smells like soap and a bit like candy. Alessandra pats my cheek with a little palm, then grabs my jaw, and I let her because she can get away with anything.
Odd to think of someone so little and… new as my sister, but it seems my family is growing every day.
Speaking of…
“Where’s Roberto?” I ask.
“Late. Probably got caught up fucking his new bride— Ow!” Vito shoves away from Caterina, glaring at her like she just stabbed him.
“Watch your mouth,” she says, shifting her eyes to Alessandra in my arms and Stephano, who’s just started saying his first words, sitting on the floor and playing with blocks.
Vito rubs his ribs, indignant. “What? It’s true.”
Luca says nothing, just gives Vito a look that makes him shut up mid-breath.
Vito mutters something under his breath and drops onto the couch again, still rubbing his side.
Bianca’s voice cuts in from the hall. “Antipasti as soon as Roberto and Olivia get here. If anyone touches before I say, I hit you with a wooden spoon like my Nonna used to do.”
Antonio lifts his good hand. “I’m wounded.”
“You still have one good side,” Bianca shoots back and disappears down the hall again.
From across the room, my father catches my eye.
He touches Elena’s back gently as he walks past her. She smiles absently and continues talking to Caterina. I set Alessandra down next to her cousin Stephano and follow him out of the room and down the hall to his study.
Luca pours two fingers of bourbon into a glass and hands it to me.
I take it.
He doesn’t sit right away. He stands by the window, looking out.
“Talk,” he says.
I should’ve known he’d hear. Even after twelve years behind bars, Luca Conti, Don of the Conti family, doesn’t miss a beat.
“I got a call about a girl at the auction,” I say.
“Some virgin,” he says. “What’s it to you?”
“She’s my assistant. Hired her a few weeks back,” I say.
He turns away from the window to look at me. “Legitimate?”
“Yeah,” I say. Irritated, I throw the bourbon back.
“Then why was she on that stage?” he asks, voice even, but his eyes sharpen. “You don’t hire women like that for your office.”
“She’s not a woman ‘like that,’ Papá,” I say, and the words come out sharper than intended. “She’s clean. She’s not some party girl. She blushes if you walk too close and brush her tit with your arm.”
He studies me like he’s looking for the catch.
“Her father is sick. She needed the money for some surgery.”
“And that was her solution? Why not go to you?”
I breathe out through my nose. “I don’t know. I guess she didn’t think of it. Or maybe she didn’t want to borrow from us. We have a reputation, you know.”
His mouth twitches. “Don’t be a smartass.”
“It’s genetic,” I say.
“If she’s so clean, how did she get herself on that stage?” he asks. “That’s Ralphie’s business, and he doesn’t exactly advertise in the paper.”
“I don’t know yet, but I intend on finding out.” I walk over to the bourbon and pour myself another. “That’s not something someone like her should’ve ever been doing.”
I knock back this drink too, as the image of Erica standing under those lights while men shouted out crude words to her comes to mind.
“If you mean one of our employees, you’re right,” he says. “They need to stay out of our business and away from our people. But if you mean some virgin trying to make a few extra bucks, that’s not our concern.”
Erica in the babydoll in the middle of the room, security standing at the door, windows bolted, cell phone taken away. Waiting for some random man to come do whatever he wanted to her.
He senses my hesitation. “Nico,” he says in warning. “You stay out of Ralphie’s business. We have enough on our plate these days.”
“Papá,” I say. “They didn’t tell her shit. They promised her safety and locked her in a room. You know who the next highest bidder was? Mal O’Hara.”
At that, he curses and turns.
As the person who runs our nightclubs and bars in town, I’m in charge of the running list of people who aren’t allowed in any of our establishments. Mal O’Hara is at the top and has been for years.
After he was caught in one of the private rooms of our strip club, The Marquee, with two of our performers—one of them beaten to death, and the other barely conscious while he cut off her air supply with his dick.
Luca’s face hardens, the warmth of the house outside this door evaporating out of him in an instant. He takes one step closer, the bourbon glass still in his hand, and his voice drops.
“Mal O’Hara,” he repeats, like the name tastes rotten. “That animal shouldn’t be anywhere near women. I can’t believe Ralphie would let someone like him bid.”
“He did,” I say. My jaw clenches. “She has no idea what almost happened.”
“So, you bid and won,” he continues. “Then what?”
“I paid; they gave me the keys.” I turn away from him to look out the window.
“You went up?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I say. My voice is flat because if it isn’t, it’ll be something else. “I went up. I walked into the suite, and she was standing there in some white thing, like a sacrifice. Trying to look brave while she was shaking. No phone. No way out. Security on the other side of the door.”
“Obviously, you had a plan.”
“Yeah. Put her in a car and send her home,” I say.
“But that’s not what you did,” he says.
Of course he knows. Of course he has contacts who would know exactly what happened in that hotel. If I came out of the room that night, Luca Conti would be the first one to know.
I turn back to look at him. “No, that’s not what I did.”
He shrugs one shoulder casually. “Of course not. You did pay seventy thousand dollars, after all.”
“Papá,” I say, and this time, I’m exasperated. “You know me better than that.”
“Apparently not.”
“That’s not what happened.”
“What happened is you paid to spend the night with a virgin. And you did.” He lifts his brows. “Does that sound about right?”
I exhale through my nose. “Both of those things happened, but they weren’t related.”
He gives me a look that says he doesn’t buy it, but he doesn’t interrupt.
“I paid,” I say. “And yes—I slept with her.” I keep my voice level when it wants to rise in defense. “Not because I went up there planning to take what I paid for. I went up there planning to do what I said: put her in a car and send her home. But I walked in, and things— changed.”
His eyes narrow. “You said she was standing there and shaking.”
“While she was waiting to see who walked in.”
“Then her boss walked in, and she begged you to fuck her?” he says, blunt as always.
Yes, actually.
But no way am I telling him that. “Not quite that way,” I say, flatly. “And before you ask, she wasn’t drunk or drugged. I didn’t force her. I read her the entire time.”
It’s his turn to exhale sharply.
“Regardless, Nico. She’s your employee, who was auctioning off her virginity, to pay for her ill father. She was completely vulnerable, and that made her completely off-limits.” He looks over my shoulder and shakes his head a little. “You know that. You shouldn’t have touched her.”
There’s a beat of silence before I say, “Well, you don’t have to worry about it happening again.”
“If anything, that’s worse,” he says. “If it’s a regular thing, people will just think it was a game you play. A kink or something.”
I furrow my brows. “That’s not really something I want to discuss with my father.”
“Don’t be a prude,” he says, shocking a laugh out of me.
His mouth twitches, then he gets serious again. “Look, Nico. I don’t know what’s going on between you and this woman. But keep a lid on it. If this is something you’re going to pursue, do it, but I don’t want to hear any whispers.”
He puts a hand on my shoulder. “But remember that she’s going to be in your office tomorrow morning and every other day. And remember that her father’s sick, and she’s vulnerable. So whatever you do, do it right.”
From the next room, we hear an explosion of greetings that must mean that Roberto and Olivia have finally arrived.
“Looks like Roberto’s finally done fucking his new bride,” I murmur.
He grins. “Well, Vito’s always had a way with words. But he’s probably right. And who can blame the guy?”
He claps my shoulder a couple of times before pulling back and walking to the door. “Better get in there, or Bianca will skin us,” he says.
“I’ll be a second,” I say.
I stare out the window again as he walks out, leaving me alone.
Once again, I picture Erica. This time, she’s in my arms, crying, clinging to me, even though I’m the one who drove her to it.
I feel an odd churning in my stomach.
Suddenly, I need to see her, and tomorrow just isn’t soon enough. I have no idea what’s going to happen, how she’s going to act.
And I have to stop thinking about it, or I’ll drive myself crazy.
I take a couple of deep breaths and set it aside mentally before heading back in for dinner.