Chapter Nineteen #2
Then he opens the foil pan, and the smell is stronger now—eggplant parm. Tomato sauce. Melted cheese. That deep, rich fried eggplant smell that’s both crisp and soft.
My stomach roils.
I swallow hard.
“I really don’t—”
“Your appetite will come back after a couple of bites,” he says, anticipating. “Right now you’re running on nothing but adrenaline and caffeine.”
He cuts a portion like this is normal. Like he does this all the time. Like he’s fed a hundred fragile people in kitchens late at night.
He puts food on my plate.
Then he opens another container.
Bread. Still warm.
He takes one, breaks it in half, and hands one half to me.
“Start with this. Slowly,” he says, then continues opening containers.
Simple salad, crisp greens, and tomatoes.
Roasted potatoes with herbs, browned edges.
One last container with something creamy and pale that makes my mouth water despite myself.
Pasta.
Not fancy. Just pasta in a light cream sauce with peas and little bits of pancetta, the kind of thing that tastes like someone who cares made it.
And then a smaller container with antipasti: a few slices of salami, marinated artichokes, olives, and roasted red peppers. Simple. Comforting.
Nothing over the top.
Just food you eat when you’ve been through something.
And despite myself, my appetite has started to come back after a couple of bites of bread.
Damn him. Does he have to be right every single time?
Can I be right once?
He sits, not across from me, but on the side closest to me.
I take another annoyed bite of bread.
“Don’t take it out on the bread,” he says, not even looking at me. “It’s not the one who fights me every step of the way.”
I narrow my eyes suspiciously. I’m beginning to think he really can read minds. Or maybe he’s a time traveler.
He holds a fork out to me and nudges a plate of the eggplant parm toward me.
My apprehension over putting real food in my stomach comes back.
When I don’t take the fork, Nico scoops a bite up and brings it to my mouth. The cheese stretches in a way that should feel indulgent and comforting, but just makes me feel sicker.
But he’s not giving up, so I hesitantly open my lips, and he slips the fork in.
The first taste hits and my body reacts like I’ve been punishing it and have just allowed it its first taste of freedom. Warm. Salty. Tomato bright. Eggplant soft with a crisp edge.
My stomach flips again, but it doesn’t reject it.
I chew carefully and swallow.
Nico is ready with another bite.
“Slowly now,” he murmurs. “Don’t want to make yourself sick.”
Something loosens in my chest at his words. It’s not something I would’ve ever expected from him.
Any of it. Feeding me, holding me, caring for me. Even the first night, bathing me, massaging my aches, icing my pains. I know he said it’s part of the territory—his responsibility—but it seems like he’s gone above and beyond responsibility at this point, and it’s confusing me.
I reach for the fork, suddenly feeling awkward about him feeding me.
Nico watches me eat, like he’s supervising me, which makes me feel both warm and stupid.
After a few bites, he speaks again.
“How did the surgery go?”
The question pulls everything back.
My fork pauses halfway to my mouth.
I put it down.
“It went… well,” I say, and my voice wobbles. I clear my throat and try again. “The doctor said they removed the mass. He said they did everything they meant to do surgically. No complications. Vitals stable.”
“He’s in ICU.” It’s not a question, which makes me wonder if he somehow knows.
I nod. My eyes sting. “They said the next twenty-four hours are important. He’s sedated. He won’t be awake until morning, maybe. Likely, he’ll be in and out of it for the next couple of days. They said I might as well go home and come back.”
I swallow hard.
“Are they worried tonight?” Nico asks.
I shake my head. “The doctor said they’d call if anything changed, but he doesn’t expect it to.”
Nico doesn’t comment on that. He must be able to sense I’m not done, because he just waits.
So the words keep coming, and I couldn’t stop them if I tried.
“I thought I could do it,” I say. “I thought I could come home, shower, sleep, go back in the morning.” My hands curl in my lap. “But the second I walked in, and it was quiet—”
My throat closes.
I take a breath and force it through.
“Not just quiet. Lifeless,” I whisper. “No TV. No noise. No him. No porch light he insists on leaving on when I’m out.
No throw blanket balled up at the end of the couch because he can’t be bothered to put it back in the right place.
No shoes I almost trip on because what’s the point in putting them in the hall closet when he’s just going to take them out again in the morning?
” My breath hitches softly on the weak laugh.
“And all I could think about was… what if this is my life? What if I have to walk through that door every night and it’s just empty? What if I’m doing it forever?”
My eyes burn.
I blink fast, furious with myself for still being this close to the edge after the shower, after the crying, after him holding me until I could breathe again.
“It just… piled up,” I say, and the words sound stupid because they’re too small for what it felt like. Each weight that dropped on me made it harder to move, stay standing, breathe.
More and more until I was a sobbing, broken mess on the floor.
“Everything. The surgery. The money because insurance is still giving me a hard time. Last week.” I avert my eyes, my cheeks reddening.
“And then I came home, and it felt like the walls were closing in and I couldn’t— I just couldn’t be alone. ”
I say it like a confession.
Like it makes me weak.
Nico’s voice stays low. “I’m glad you called.”
My face heats.
“Thanks for coming,” I mumble, hating how small it sounds. Hating how much it mattered.
Nico’s chair shifts softly.
He doesn’t reach for me. He doesn’t close the space.
He just says, “I said I would.”
I glance back at him.
His expression holds nothing I would’ve expected.
No games. No smugness. No punishment for the fact that I snapped at him on Friday and then called him on Monday.
My throat tightens again.
I pick up my fork because if I don’t have something to do with my hands, I’ll break all over again.
I take another bite of eggplant parm.
Then another.
At some point I realize he’s been maneuvering it so I eat more than I’d planned to without making it obvious—sliding the plate closer, angling the bread toward me, putting a couple more potatoes on my plate when I only have one left.
Feeding me without feeding me.
It’s ridiculous.
It’s… kind.
I swallow and look down at my plate.
“This is really good,” I say, because I need to say something that isn’t about fear or loneliness or the fact that my whole life feels like it’s balancing on a thin wire.
Nico’s mouth twitches. “It should be.”
“I’ve never been to Regalia.” I glance at the take-out bags again. “If I’d known it was this good, I’d have racked up a pretty hefty tab by now.”
I take another bite, then a piece of warm bread, and the simple act of chewing comforts me a little.
Nico’s mouth twitches. “It was a special order.”
The reaction puzzles me a bit.
A special order? I’m sure the restaurants in the area take special care when the Contis order. But that doesn’t seem funny.
Well, as close to funny as it gets with Nico, I guess.
So, maybe it’s more personal than that.
A woman?
I don’t know why the thought occurs to me, but it makes sense the moment it does.
I can picture it very easily. A woman— An Italian woman, packing everything up with care for him. Probably gorgeous. And tall. With a thick fall of dark hair that he gathers in his fist, that unbreakable grip, and endless legs that wrap around him while he…
I shove another bite of eggplant parm in my mouth to hide the direction my thoughts have gone.
Somehow, he can read me like a damn book, and it would just be the cherry on top of the worst sundae of all time if he senses that I’m jealous.
“It belongs to Bianca.”
Bianca. Perfect fit. Italian, dark hair, long legs. Sultry, sexy voice. Cooks like a goddess, apparently. The exact opposite of me in every way.
“My Uncle Giovanni’s wife,” he continues.
Oh.
I look up to see him with his head tilted just slightly. He’s not smiling, but there’s an air of amusement about him. Then he picks up his own fork and twirls it in the pasta.
Feeling stupid for my unexplainable thoughts, I stab a potato.
His uncle’s wife.
In my head, the Contis are this untouchable, sealed-off world of money and control and men who don’t flinch in any situation.
And Bianca is a person who owns a restaurant that sends steaming eggplant parm in foil pans, along with an assortment of thoughtful foods. Probably put together rather quickly since it was here by the time I got out of the shower, but still made with care and love.
“She’s a great chef,” Nico adds. “Never misses.”
I chew another bite and let the silence sit for a second, because it’s safer than saying the wrong thing.
But my brain won’t leave it alone.
I’m familiar with the Contis. Everyone who grew up here is, but the details of the family outside of the… active members in the crime family aren’t very well-known.
“Do you… do you have a lot of family?” I ask finally, keeping my eyes on my plate like it’s an innocent question. “Besides your Uncle Giovanni and his wife.”
Nico’s fork pauses over the pasta.
He looks at me like he’s deciding how much to give me.
“Yes,” he says. Simple.
Then, because he’s being this version of himself tonight, he adds, “Three uncles, that includes Giovanni. Got a brother and two sisters.”
His brother, Vito, is another well-known Conti. He has a reputation, but very different from Nico’s. No patience and none of that dark and commanding presence that Nico wears like one of his expensive suits.
Vito is known to be more… violent. Impulsive. Brute. Just as terrifying but not as subtle.