25. Ava
25
Ava
Emma won’t stop crying. I don’t blame her. It’s a miserable day.
Patting the baby on the back, I try not to think about what’s happening downstairs, my whole little life getting rearranged. I know it’s not much of a life, and it’s the second time it’s happened in as many months—but it still weighs on me, a dark cloud heralding the changes on the wind. I will share my bed with another man. I will spend my time in his company, as much as he asks of me. I will learn the names of all his boring business friends and pretend to laugh at their jokes.
It is exactly the sort of thing I could have done easily weeks ago. It wouldn’t have been fun, but it would have been survivable. Now, I can barely stand the thought of it. Because of him . Nico has made everything better—and therefore worse.
Tessa got called away and left me with the fussy little baby, who sobs and sobs as if she’s had her own heart ripped out. I know how she feels, how devastating it is to have the person who is your whole world torn away from you suddenly. I bounce her, trying my hardest to shush her.
She only wails harder.
I try everything I can think of. I double-check her diaper, making sure she’s changed and fresh. I switch out her clothes, in case there’s something uncomfortable about her onesie. I rock her, and sing to her, and finally resort to begging her.
She’s pink in the face, hot tears spilling down those plump little cheeks.
I don’t know what she wants or how to make her happy. Is it just me? Do I just not have what it takes?
“Come on, baby,” I croon softly to her, begging her to stop. “It’s okay. Just tell me what you want. Anything.”
Her shrill little cry rattles my eardrums.
Overwhelmed, I head downstairs to try walking her around. Her voice fills up the house as she cries to the point of hiccups. We walk up and down the stairs, we turn circles in the sitting rooms, we go around and around, looking at everything I can think to show her and get her attention. She cries harder.
I slump down in the living room with her, begging her to stop, on the verge of crying myself.
What am I doing wrong?
This whole time I’ve been telling myself I have to be prepared to be alone—maybe forever. It turns out, I can’t be alone with a baby for ten minutes without a disaster-level meltdown. My own emotions lash and roil right alongside Emma’s, my nerves so frayed and thin lately, I want to break down right along with her.
“What’s all the fuss?”
My head jerks up as Nico steps into the room, holding a familiar box in his hands.
“Nico,” I gasp, the word lost in Emma’s crying. I didn’t expect him to be back at the house. I look between him and the box of Vinny’s things in his hands. “What are you doing with that?”
“Bringing it to you for safekeeping. Thaddeus was going to throw it away,” Nico says. He carries Vinny’s things to me and puts them on the couch.
My heart skips.
“ What ? I told him just to push my stuff out of the way, not—”
There’s hardly any point to speaking as Emma gives another long, anguished cry. I brace myself against the tiny thread of anxiety spinning and spinning inside of me, threatening to snap.
“I’m sorry, I just…she won’t stop, and I don’t know what’s wrong, and…”
Suddenly, Emma is whisked from my grasp. I blink as Nico scoops her up into his arms.
“You got a lot to say, don’t you?” he teases her, scratching his fingers against her belly. “That’s a lot of opinions for somebody so little.”
Even Emma is surprised, too surprised to cry for a few moments, her big eyes wide and curious as she’s stolen away. She looks at Nico, who sweet-talks her lowly, asking her what the big idea is. The moment she thinks about crying again, Nico cradles one big hand around her neck and the other under her back, feigning tossing her around as he carefully swoops her up and down in the air. Her desperate crying turns into frantic giggles. She loves it, squealing and laughing. Nico grins as he wins her over in a flash, her little limbs kicking, begging for more, each dip of his arms accompanied by a playful roar as he pretends to sling her around.
Nico dances around the dusk-purpled living room with a baby in his arms. It twists my heart into a vise.
“It’s not your fault you’re a little troublemaker, is it?” he asks her as he gives her another playful pretend-toss. “It runs in the family.”
He plays right along with her, holds her so carefully but so fondly, sheer adoration in his face—no matter what he feels for Salvatore, with one look I can tell he would never hold that against Emma.
He’s so perfect with her that now my tears start coming and they don’t stop. I look at him like that and see everything that I could give him. How can he not want that? I can see it so plainly in him, right here in front of me!
My hand slides against my belly, and suddenly, the truth feels lightweight.
“Nico,” I choke out through my tight throat, desperate to tell him.
He spins around, surprised by the tears in my voice—but his expression darkens as his eyes land on something over my shoulder.
“Put her down, now .”
Salvatore’s voice is cold and deadly as it interrupts us, cutting through my confession like a blade. I recognize his tone immediately—the resigned voice of a man who has already made a deadly decision, who is too outraged to be angry . I leap to my feet, spinning around to find Salvatore, Marcel, and Thaddeus standing in the arched doorway. Thaddeus is red in the face with a necklace of ugly, violent bruises around his neck and one bloodshot eye. He cradles his hand to his chest.
Emma whines when Nico stops playing with her, frozen to the spot as she squirms in his grip.
“Sal, I wasn’t…”
For the first time, genuine worry colors Nico’s voice.
Emma starts to cry again, filling up the tense air as her fingers tug at his shirt, trying to figure out how to get him to play with her again. I rush to them and slip Emma out of his arms and into mine. I turn to stand between him and the angry men.
“What’s happening?” I ask, staring at Thaddeus, shocked by the state of him.
“Ava,” Marcel snaps, “get over here.”
The fact that he has his pistol drawn at his side isn’t subtle, even if he tries to hide it behind his suit jacket. I hold my ground, bewildered, begging someone to explain as Emma wails in my arms.
“But what—”
“Bring my daughter over here, now,” Salvatore says, so furiously that the frightened little girl I used to be responds. I go skittering to him, easing Emma into his arms. Salvatore takes her and steps behind Marcel, letting his second-in-command take point with the gun in his grip.
“He didn’t do anything,” I say.
“He tried to kill Thaddeus,” Marcel answers, shoving me behind him so that he has a clear shot.
I look Thaddeus over and take in the pathetic state of him.
“Bullshit,” I whisper furiously. “If Nico tried to kill Thaddeus, then he’d be dead .”
Nico gives me a half-grin, but the happiness doesn’t reach his eyes. It’s a grim and resigned look, as if his fate is already sealed. I can sense it in the air. Salvatore is just reading the charges—the verdict has already been decided. I don’t understand what happened, everything happening too suddenly. Nico was with me . How could he have done anything to Thaddeus?
But looking at Nico, he isn’t denying it. He isn’t confused.
He knows what happened.
“You attacked a member of our family,” Salvatore says to him. “You almost choked the life out of him, and then with his blood on your hands, you had the audacity to come here and put those same hands on my daughter .”
My heart burns, emotions thundering. It’s not fair. I know what Salvatore is like, I know that he’s protective of those closest to him, and that his protectiveness is only amplified where his daughter is concerned—but it’s not fair . He’s painting the picture all wrong. I don’t know what happened between Nico and Thaddeus, but I know more than anything that Nico wasn’t going to hurt Emma.
“He was just trying to help—” I try to interject for him, but Salvatore rounds on me so fast, it makes me jump.
“And you! You’ll be lucky if you ever touch her again, either. I asked you to help Tessa look after her because I trusted you, and that trust was betrayed.”
I swallow hard, my heart racing.
I glance to Marcel, but his glare is only on Nico. He doesn’t turn to look my way or speak up to defend me. Through his silence, I know he agrees with Salvatore. The world feels like it’s shrinking in around me. There’s nowhere left to go, no more second chances to beg for.
“Ava, you need to get out of here,” Nico says calmly.
“No,” I whimper.
This can’t happen.
I have exactly one card left, and I’m terrified to play it.
Would it save him, if they knew? Or would they dig Nico’s grave just a little bit deeper, so he wouldn’t claw his way back to the living just to get to me and his child? I hold the truth under my tongue, debating if this is the moment—and how the high-strung, already emotional men in this room are going to react to it. The gun in Marcel’s grip looks too ready, as if it already knows the answer.
My stomach lurches.
Does the truth make it better or worse?
Suddenly, Marcel steps forward and leverages the gun between Nico’s eyes.
“Marcel, don’t!” I beg him.
“Tell me why I shouldn’t, Nico,” he says lowly. “You’ve practically been begging for it. I should just put you out of your fucking misery.”
Nico doesn’t flinch, but his voice is black with hate when he says,
“Shoot me if you want, but don’t you dare do it in front of her.” His gaze slides to me again as he says, more firmly, “Ava, go .”
My brother’s gaze moves between me and Nico, and he digs the muzzle of the gun deeper into Nico’s skull. “I’d be doing her a fucking favor, getting rid of you.”
“Marcel, please,” I beg him, on the verge of sobbing, while Emma cries and cries, a hundred different emotions roiling on all sides of the room, anger and misery lashing against each other and whipping the room into a frenzy.
“What the hell is happening?” Tessa says suddenly, stepping sharply into the chaos as if she’s impervious to all the tension in the air. She lifts Emma from Salvatore and bounces the baby on her shoulder. Tessa’s gaze moves coldly around the room—from my tear-stained face, to Salvatore’s wrathful expression, to Nico being held one trigger finger from death.
“In my sitting room? Really , Sal?” she asks dryly.
Her calm demeanor shakes up the tension of the room.
“We’re just taking out the trash, ma’am,” Marcel says calmly, his eyes fixed on Nico.
“No one is taking anything anywhere until I know what’s going on,” Contessa says. She stays in the doorway and blocks the way, her eyes on Salvatore as she waits patiently for an explanation.
“Thaddeus was getting settled into Ava’s room,” Salvatore says, “When out of nowhere, Nico followed him outside and jumped him in the yard. He nearly killed him—”
Tessa interrupts, “But he didn’t, because I saw what happened between them, and I stopped it myself. I sent Nico in here to give this back to Ava,” she says, gesturing to the box of Vinny’s things on the couch, “while I went to see what other damage he’d done to the room. I didn’t know you’d be staging a public execution in my living room. These seem to be the only things he outright stole—”
“Stole?” Thaddeus rasps. “It’s a bunch of garbage taking up space.”
“They’re sentimental. From Vincent Mori,” Tessa says sharply, still speaking directly to Salvatore; she is the only person in the room who he can hear through his anger and his distrust, her words the only ones that reach him. “And even if it was junk, it still doesn’t belong to him .”
I’m holding my breath and my poker face, silently begging Tessa to talk sense into him.
“Nico knew what this box was and what it meant, and he knew Ava would be devastated to lose it. So he stopped him, perhaps aggressively, and he took it back. If there’s any crime in that, I don’t see Nico being the perpetrator.”
Salvatore glances to Thaddeus, his gaze dark. He weighs his judgment, the whole room seeming to chill for a moment as he digests the truth. Thaddeus glares down at the floor.
“I didn’t know they were important,” he tries to say, but Salvatore interrupts before he can dig the hole deeper.
“Even if the version of the truth I got was abridged …that’s still not grounds to jump a man. You don’t take justice into your own hands, not in this family. If there’s a dispute, it’s brought to us.” His gaze lingers on Emma as he adds, “And he still knew better than to put his hands on her .”
“That was my fault,” I jump in, desperate to dive on the grenade. “I handed her to Nico. Just for a minute, I didn’t think anything about it at the time. It was my fault, Salvatore, I swear,” I beg, frantic for him to believe me, even if it isn’t true. “It was only going to be for a second, and he didn’t do anything. You saw .”
Salvatore’s anger doesn’t soften easily. His eyes move between me and Tessa, trying to read us. He steps closer to his wife, his voice low, so that I only hear the slightest beat of the syllables as he asks,
“Why are you defending him?”
Tessa meets his gaze steadily. “Because the punishment doesn’t fit the crime, and you know it. You’re just looking for an excuse. If you had a real grievance against him, then you’d have my full support, love. But all you really have is a childhood rivalry neither of you outgrew. This isn’t worth shooting your brother over, Sal. If the rest of the family hears that it went down this way, there will be sides drawn. I don’t want to raise my daughter in a divided house.”
Salvatore’s silence fills the room.
Hope dares to spring up inside my chest. I don’t understand why Tessa is defending him, and I don’t think Salvatore does either, but she’s resolute. He loves her and respects her too much to simply ignore her.
Marcel stands with the gun still in his grip, immobile, waiting patiently for the verdict. I know he must be itching for it, to have everything so close to being back to the way it was before. So close to a solution, but it keeps slipping further and further away.
“How long are we going to wait, Sal?” Marcel asks. “Are we just going to push it off and push it off, until it’s too late and the damage is done? What does he have to do before the reason is good enough?”
“I don’t know,” Salvatore says, and then finally sighs, “but this isn’t it.”