31. Ava
31
Ava
It’s at the end of another long day when, late into the evening, Marcel’s hand curls around mine and gives it a squeeze. I wake from a daze, bolting back to reality. Marcel’s eyes are open for the first time since he was admitted to the hospital. He looks me up and down. Stabbed and freshly stitched from surgery, the first groggy thing Marcel asks is, “Are you alright?”
He’s answered by my frantic sobbing. It’s not a good first impression of the situation. I wrap my arms around him and refuse to let him go. He doesn’t complain even when I know he’s in pain, assuring me over and over that he’s alright, that everything is going to be fine now.
I’ve never felt a relief like this. A relief that hurts almost as much as the fear does, when you know just how close you came to disaster, that it makes you cry, too. I barely have the sense to call for a nurse and let them take over.
He’s strong enough to be moved to the second hospital recommended by the family, and soon we are in a nicer room that is furnished more like a private bedroom than a hospital room. Concerned about the possibility of secondary infection and charting the progress of his healing, the doctors want to keep him for another forty-eight hours for monitoring, and he has his own personally appointed nurse for round the clock care, and her sole attention is Marcel.
From what little bit of nursing school I survived, I know it’s quite a bit of overkill.
Either they’re being extra cautious with the second-in-command of the Mori family, or Salvatore has taken his best friend being stabbed quite personally and started signing checks and arranging for the best of the best care. No one suggests I abide by any visiting hours, and I’m allowed to stay with Marcel night and day. He’s the only one who complains about it.
When he isn’t working, Thaddeus drops in often. He is incredibly invested in Marcel getting better. I know why, we all do, but I tell myself it doesn’t matter what the reasons are. Not anymore. Like the rest of the family who come in and out, to check in and pay respects, he makes sure I’m fed and that I have everything I need.
It’s only when we’re alone, when things are finally calm and the sun is setting again, that I apologize to him for Nico. There’s a lot to apologize for. For ignoring Marcel’s warnings, and the way that I’ve been acting, and for not seeing the truth about what Nico was. Marcel brushes off my apologies like he always does, making excuses for me.
He says what happened between him and Nico had nothing to do with me.
It is the first time I’ve ever wondered if my brother is lying to me. The light slides down the wall, steeping the room in purpling shadows. If he’s lying, I know it’s to protect me, so that I don’t feel guilty about what happened to him. But I still wonder.
I’ve had a lot of time to sit here and think about Nico. I just don’t see how this could have nothing to do with me—unless the man really had me so fooled, all he ever wanted was to get Marcel out of the way. When I finally blocked his number, maybe he knew that chance was over. That there was only one way left for him to climb to the top, and it was over my brother’s body.
But then how is Marcel even here?
When Salvatore visited Marcel, right after he first woke up, he asked him. But Marcel said he couldn’t remember. He remembers going to Nico’s to meet up, that they needed to talk about the family—and then nothing. He suggests easing off the pain medication, if maybe that will make his head clearer, and I backed them both off from the topic immediately. Whatever happened in that apartment, it’s not worth Marcel suffering more than he already has.
I haven’t asked what happened to Nico. I am pretending, even to myself, that I don’t care. Maybe they killed him. Maybe he went on the run. It doesn’t matter, I tell myself, whenever he comes creeping back through my thoughts. I look at my brother, seeming too pale and too small in a hospital bed, and repeat: whatever happened to him, he deserved it .
Before the third day is out, Marcel convinces Thaddeus to take me home and take care of me. He’s been improving quickly, and he promises that he’ll soon be back home with the rest of us. There’s no need for me to sleep cramped up on a couch shoved into one side of the room.
I can’t argue with him, and finally, I go back home.
For a whole day, all I want to do is sleep. I nod off constantly, always feeling a little sick to my stomach and with no appetite to eat anything at all. This has all taken so much out of me.
I sleep deep and often, and in my dreams, I keep asking Nico why he did it. I scream at him, I push him, I try to hit him, but I can’t. The punches in my dreams are heavy and slow. I can’t do anything to him at all, and he just keeps standing there.
And no matter how many times I ask, he just keeps saying that he didn’t. Over and over. I can’t escape him. In my dreams, he’s always there, racing down the highway or stalking me through the streets. He’s in my every other thought.
Tessa says they sent Nico to Chicago, but they didn’t.
He’s right here .
In my head. In my belly.
I wake up and have to puke.
Marcel is back home by the end of the week. His pain needs to be managed and he can’t exert himself. That doesn’t stop him from trying, of course. Salvatore and I both feel stupid for letting him come home when we knew he wouldn’t rest if he was here.
I hate that I’m starting to see how alike we are, in little ways. How can two people raised in organized crime be so bad at following orders? But slowly, life goes back to normal. Everything is fine again. I am investing in frumpy sweaters and waking up early to creep out of my bedroom to throw up. I am well over three months pregnant now, and when I stand in the mirror and look at my profile, I can see the distinct swell of my belly. Through all the stress and exhaustion and turmoil, the little thing held on. They’re a fighter, just like their—
My thoughts jerk like a car swerving around a deer, nearly rolling into a ditch with how violently I avoid it. I have to remind myself, in that moment of weakness: they don’t have a father. I might as well be carrying the next coming of Christ for how little of a father this baby is going to have.
The slightest fond thought of Nico, and the tears start coming—which means I do a lot of crying these days. Between the hormones and the drama and the devastating situation I have put myself in, I imagine the family might just find me one day lying in a puddle, drowned on land in my own tears.
My bedroom is once again a tiny torture chamber. With Thaddeus next to me, I lie in the dark, looking around at Nico’s handiwork and the second life he gave me, and try to see the selfishness in it. Vinny’s things are still safely tucked away in the closet, now as much associated with Nico as they are with Vinny. I look around at all this, and I don’t see the man that would stab my brother in the dead of night.
The thought itches at the back of my mind constantly, urging me to unblock his number and make him explain, to hear his side of it all. I can only imagine what Marcel would say, how I would lap up any story from him, no matter if it was the truth or not. Just as Thaddeus slept soundly through Nico slipping into our bedroom and pleasuring me to the point of shaking, he sleeps, utterly oblivious, through my shaking tears and crying night after night.
I go to sleep and I dream about Nico. I wake up and I think about Nico.
I feel his absence as keenly as I felt Vinny’s—except I’m not mourning Nico, I tell myself. I’m just mourning the man I thought he was.
And I am trying— really trying —to make things work with Thaddeus now.
He assumes my moodiness has something to do with the attack on Marcel, as if I am some frail, hysterical Victorian lady tied up in a corset. I don’t know how he hasn’t caught on to my pregnancy, except that he just doesn’t pay very much attention to me at all. It’s almost commendable how much he must want this position, putting up with me like this day and night. I’m starting to be sick of myself.
It’s still early when I stumble my way into the bathroom. Usually, I can make it down the hall. The house has no shortage of pointless bathrooms I can hide away in to be sick, but this morning, I wake up violently nauseous, and I know I’m not going to make it. I retch into the toilet, mere feet away from Thaddeus. The floorboards creak. He hears me as my stomach roils again and another pitiful amount of vomit comes up. I feel so awful for how little food is actually in my stomach.
“What are you doing?” he asks, tired. “Are you sick?”
My burning throat works around the words, through stomach acid and last night’s dinner.
“No,” I say, forcing a smile through the stinging tears biting at my eyes, reaching for any lie to feed him. “I’m trying to watch my figure.”
“Oh,” Thaddeus says, too pleasantly surprised, his voice warm and proud. “Good for you. I didn’t want to have to say anything.”
The happy reception of my make-believe eating disorder burns me up like an inferno, and I’d be more upset with him if I could breathe without smelling stomach acid. He’s probably so happy that I’m trying to be his stupidly thin but perfectly busty wife.
But I have to play nice. I have to . This is survival mode now, and if I want to convince Thaddeus to pass off this baby as his own, then playing nice is part of the deal.
I buy new clothes. My baby bump and growing breasts demand it. I’m stunned by how much they’ve changed over mere weeks, and I shop for things that will fit and better hide my new body—but also things that will please him. Expensive designer brands that are more a statement than a style.
I’m finally glad Thaddeus wanted me to be a little modest. It will buy me just a little more time, and that is what I keep convincing myself I need—just a little more time. I ask to go with him to his dinners, and on his arm, I practice a demure and flattered smile as I toy with old business tycoons and city planners.
By the end of the week, I have scheduled an appointment at a spa, for me, and an appointment at the salon, for him. I leave the salon with tears in my eyes and a platinum blonde balayage on my hair, just how he likes it.
I am finally everything Thaddeus listed—blonde, busty tradwife material. The boob job even came free. And I can cement his place high within the family order within six months flat, if he agrees to one tiny term and condition:
He has to accept my baby as his own, and never tell anyone the truth.
I am waiting for the moment, waiting for that perfect opportunity to pitch my deal, reading his mood like the weather, needing sunny skies and a forgiving breeze.
I find my chance on the heels of a business dinner. Thaddeus uses me to flirt my way into a multimillion-dollar business deal for the Mori family with the very interested Mr. Godfrey, with only the subtle suggestion that one day, I will be invited to a threesome with him and his foreign model wife, who has taken a liking to me.
I don’t know if I have to actually accept that invitation, but for now, it doesn’t matter. I have more pressing problems than some future sex party that requires legal documents and signed NDAs. Thaddeus drank through the dinner—which I suspect is how most of these business deals get done, everyone at the table drinking themselves past the point of good common sense—and he’s drunk and happy when we make it back home.
“They agreed. They agreed, Ava. Ten million, easy, right off the top.”
For the first time, Thaddeus takes my face in his hands and kisses me, the booze on his breath making his hands heavy and clumsy.
My whole body revolts at the touch of his lips, but I force myself to stay still, to let his tongue push futilely into my mouth. He careens us toward the bed, more a controlled descent than an intended destination as we fall into bed together. He laughs happily, hair falling into his eyes.
He crawls over me, kissing me again.
“Done fucking deal!” he yells again, with the same drunken enthusiasm as a man whose team just won the Superbowl.
I control my breathing, staring over his shoulder, trying my hardest to play along and act like I can stomach this. Like my whole body doesn’t want to run . It feels wrong and I don’t want it, but I take his face back and kiss him again. He pushes his hands up my dress, but I grab his wrists and stop him.
“Wait,” I whisper, the fear thickening my voice. “Wait, Thaddeus. I need to…I need to tell you something.”
He hums his question, the drink glossy in his eyes.
“You want this to work, right?” I ask him. “Just as much as I do.”
“Fuck yeah, I want this to work. You and I, we’re gonna do some amazing things together, Ava.”
He makes a careless dive for my mouth again, and I have to physically hold him back.
“Then I need you to listen to me, okay? Please listen.” I can barely speak through the terror, my vocal cords paralyzed with how reluctant I am to tell him. Thaddeus stills, attentive, his drunk expression oh-so happy and blissful. If there is a moment, this is that moment. I swallow my fear.
“I’m pregnant.”
Words like that should be harder to say. They should hurt on the way up, or weigh a thousand pounds. But they’re just words, and they leave my lips light as air. Thaddeus doesn’t comprehend. Not at first. His expression twists, full of uncertainty and good humor, trying to figure out the joke.
“I’m pregnant,” I repeat again, just as serious, forcing him to hear me.
“But…” He’s getting there, one neuron connecting at a time. “You and I, we haven’t…”
The tears well up behind my eyes as I nod, trying to walk him to the conclusion as gently as I can.
“Right. But it doesn’t matter, right? Because the sooner we have a baby, the better it is for us . For our standing. Salvatore and Marcel will be so happy, and—”
“You’re a virgin.”
The words are like a slap.
He gets off me, staring me down, the distance between us feeling vast and frigid like the Arctic tundra. All the warmth of the alcohol has drained out of his face, left it ruddy and unsure. “You told me you’re a virgin. You can’t be pregnant.”
“When I told you that, it was still true.” For about an hour.
He pushes me off of him, and I scramble back to block the door so he can’t storm right off to Marcel and Salvatore, spilling my secret all over the house. I beg him to see reason.
“Thaddeus, think it through! This is perfect for us. I got pregnant after we met. No one would think it’s not yours, and it hardly matters whose it is—”
“I knew Salvatore was pawning his trash off onto me! I knew it, and I still fucking played along!”
Dreads chills my stomach. I try to talk to him again, try to close the distance, begging him to see me as the pretty, shallow future he wants, right here for the taking. All he stares at is my belly, his drunk disbelief sobering into a cold, crystal-clear fury.
“You fucking whore,” he snarls.
The backhanded slap sends me reeling. He grabs me by the front of my dress and drags me to him, snapping his hand across my face again before I can even get my senses straight. The second hit rekindles my instincts.
“Stop it!” I beg, as he gets his fist into my hair, trying to sling me around the bedroom as he yells. “Thaddeus, please!”
He holds me in his grip, the moment trembling, my face hurting and tears streaming, but even as he threatens me with another hit, my hands leave my face unguarded, arms instinctively wrapped around my belly.
“Listen to me,” he says, savage and drunk. “I’m not going to be made a fool of. Not me. I’m not raising someone else’s bastard while the whole fucking family mutters the truth behind my back—fuck that. You’re going to get rid of it, aren’t you?” he pressures.
I shake my head, and Thaddeus’s fist cracks against my cheek.
“You’re going to get rid of it, aren’t you?” he repeats, louder.
The world spins, becoming a flash of light and pain. I’m too dazed to beg. I’ve never been hit before, not like this, with a man’s malice and intent to harm, and it takes the whole world out from under me.
“No,” I seethe, and he hits me again. My knees give out.
“I swear to fucking God, Ava, you—you are not going to ruin this for me. I wanted to be a good husband. But if I have to break you in, so fucking be it.”
He tries to kick me in the stomach, but my arms catch the worst of the blow. That one act sparks a fury inside me, and suddenly I come up off the ground, pushing Thaddeus as hard as I can, with all my strength. He’s drunk and he stumbles, and I make a break for the door, slinging it open. I try to run, still reeling, but he comes up behind me and throws me into the wall, dragging me back.
His hand clamps around my mouth before I can scream as he drags me back into my bedroom. He slams the door, standing crookedly between me and the exit and catching his breath. On the floor, I curl as tight as I can around my belly. I’m insane with fight or flight, all instincts now, sheer survival. He peels off his jacket and throws it aside, kneeling down with his fingers twisted into my hair.
“You could’ve done this the easy way,” he says.
There never was an easy way.
Summers coming up off the ground flashes behind my eyelids again, and in a stupidly brave and last-ditch effort, I reel up and headbutt Thaddeus square on the forehead, with all the strength I have. He staggers backward. We’re both dazed, but I have an advantage, something that gets me oriented and on my feet quicker: I’m not just trying to save myself . Thaddeus sprawls between me and the door. I grab my phone and the knife Nico got me for my birthday, still sitting in its pretty display box.
Before Thaddeus is back on his feet, I cut through the window screen and push out into the night, dropping onto the ground outside. I run on blind instincts I have never had to use before. I’ve never had to survive . My window lets me out into the backyard, where confused and staggered, I run through the dark, deeper into the backyard and the twisting gardens where Thaddeus might not be able to follow.
Maybe he’ll go to Salvatore and Marcel. Maybe he’ll spin some wild tale. Or maybe he’ll come after me, a shadow in the dark. I don’t know. Marcel is still wounded, and Salvatore—what if he makes me get rid of it, too? What if he agrees with Thaddeus?
I hunch behind the hedges and open my phone, scrolling frantically though the settings, my fingers shaking so hard, I can barely navigate the buttons under my fingertips. I am finally listening to my instincts, to that feeling that has been nettling me all along, the certainty I have felt in my bones.
I swipe across my phone’s settings, dragging the lock free: Unblock .