35. Ava
35
Ava
My blood pressure, as it turns out, isn’t quite as high when I don’t have a dead man’s blood dried into the lines of my palms. Fancy that.
But it still isn’t perfect, even if it isn’t as dangerous, and it keeps everyone on their toes. My doctor’s appointments get more frequent, and my doctors more numerous. Nico insists on second opinions, until I have a veritable medical team listed as emergency contacts in my phone. I understand why he’s anxious, that this is his own trauma, and I do what I can to accommodate him and not fuss about it all too much.
The nightmares start eventually, but Nico is always there now, every night, to chase Thaddeus out of my head or to hold my hair back when my morning sickness decides to be night sickness, and the smell of food has nothing to do with it anymore.
I feel bad for Nico. I know new parents aren’t supposed to get much sleep, but our baby isn’t even born yet, and he’s already being kept up at all hours. But he never complains.
I know he’s still worried, and that he will keep worrying until the baby is delivered, so I abide by all his rules and work with all the experts brought in to monitor me. It’s almost funny how we slip right back into our old roles. Nico sets the rules, and this time, I am unquestionably good. And fucking finally , so is he.
Nico doesn’t fight anymore. He still goes and watches the fighters, and he still has to go out sometimes in the dead of night, doing God knows what to God knows who, but he says he’s never getting in the cage again. It hurts a little to know that I’ve taken something he loved from him, but I’m hopeful that I can give him something he’ll love more.
He wears body armor these days, everywhere he goes. He tries to get me to do the same when we go out, but my belly and hormones just can’t stand it. Only six months in, and I’m uncomfortable enough without any Kevlar.
The discomfort is worth it by just how much Nico loves seeing me pregnant with his baby. He’s always showering me in affection, kissing my belly and talking to our baby as if it can hear and understand its daddy’s every word.
He tries to conspire with the baby to make it kick until I have to shoo him away before I get all bruised up. He says he’s just getting an early start on teaching the baby how to fight, and I tell Nico he can teach the baby to fight once it’s his ribs and organs being used as punching bags. He agrees, but the baby kicks regardless, from those soft fluttering moments it first figures out how, and never really stops unless it’s asleep.
“You don’t have a knife on you, do you?”
I glance up to find Nico in the doorway of our under-construction nursery. He’s been out with Salvatore and Marcel, and he has flecks of blood on his hands and shirt, and his face is grim and serious. Immediately, my heart kicks into my throat, but he pulls me into his arms and tells me it isn’t his. I shudder as he kisses the top of my head.
“Jesus Christ, Nico…”
“You didn’t answer. Knife or no knife?”
I double take, patting the pockets of the maternity outfit I have finally given into wearing. “What, why? No knife.”
“Good. Because I’m kidnapping you.”
And just like that, Nico gently scoops me up into his arms with a yelp and leaves a flutter of paint swatches in his wake.
“Nico, what’s going on? Where am I being kidnapped to?” I ask.
“If I told you that, it wouldn’t be a kidnapping.”
“I don’t think you know the definition of kidnapping.”
Nico holds his smug silence and just kisses me instead of answering. I’ll take it, but the atmosphere is strange. Nico doesn’t seem like himself, haunted in some way. I’m “kidnapped” to the car. We take the route into the city and arrive at a stone building jutting horizontally into the sky, its gothic structure ominous and familiar. The church the Mori family have used for decades.
“Nico, what’s happening?” I ask, and then, desperate to lighten to the mood, I tease, “Are we getting right with God?”
“I’m getting right with somebody, but it isn’t God.”
I reach out and scrub a fleck of blood from his rugged jaw.
“Nico, what…?”
“Get out.”
And I trust Nico so much, so deeply, I don’t even question it when he pulls a gun from the inside of his jacket and steps out of the car with me.
“Nico, what’s wrong? You’re scaring me. It’s not good for the baby.”
“Come on,” he urges. He puts a hand on the small of my back and guides me along toward the church. The air is still and muted, dust swirling in an array of rainbow colors as the sunlight soaks into the stained-glass windows.
“Father,” Nico yells, his voice carrying through the empty church. I wince on instinct. A woman praying in the first pew turns and gives him a wide-eyed, furious look, but the sight of the gun in his hand makes her grab her purse and hurry through the nearest door.
“Nico, what the fuck?” I beg, whispering like we’re in a library while Nico yells.
A priest in dour black and a weather-worn expression steps out from the back of the church, but that look changes as he recognizes the man standing in front of him.
Nico leverages the gun on him and says, “ Marry us .”
The priest and I share similar expressions, and his gaze drops to my pregnant belly with a dry twitch of his eyebrows.
My head hasn’t caught up with my racing heart as Nico drops to his knee in front of me, one hand still holding a gun on the man there at a sharp angle.
“Nico, what—”
“I know I’m supposed to ask,” he says, not apologetic. “I know that. And one day I will. One day. And if you say yes, I’ll give you the biggest wedding you’ve ever seen, and the most beautiful dress, and I’ll invite everyone we know and everyone we don’t, just so they can all see me make you mine. I swear on my life, I will give that to you, Ava. I’ll give you a wedding so big, every princess that’s ever lived would be jealous of you. But for now, this has to do. It has to. I need you to be a part of this family, protected by everything it has to offer. Even if you change your mind about all this, even if something happens to me—I want you to take my last name, Ava. Hell, I want you to take all of me, but for now—”
“Nico,” I whisper, and oh God something has him spooked, and there’s another dried patch of red in his beard as we stand here, the world shrinking in around me. My hands cup his cheeks, shaking, the emotion roiling in me. “Nico, yes—you know you don’t have to wait to ask— yes, always yes —”
He comes up off the ground to kiss me, pulling me against him with one arm, my belly a bulging little barrier between us. But he kneels down and kisses my belly too, as if pledging himself to the both of us. My heart soars, emotions flying a million miles a minute—faster and more thrilling than any competitive sports car could manage. I don’t care about a wedding, or that we are surrounded by rows of empty pews and a sweating priest. I’m getting married. Married .
I never thought I would. I had buried the dream with Vinny.
But our baby kicks and stirs in my belly, a constant thump thump thump , as if feeding off of my own sky-high feelings. If the poor thing feels the same rush and weightless feeling in my belly that I do, they probably think they’re skydiving.
Nico stands again, looking to the priest. I’m flustered and red in the face, and I give the poor man there at gunpoint a sympathetic glance, a silent apology for my man’s behavior, but God I don’t regret it. This is just like him, and I love him and every wild, impulsive, stupid decision that he makes.
The priest sighs. “Is the gun really necessary, Mr. Mori?”
“I didn’t have the time to make an appointment.”
“Well, your appointment is made. Now put it away , please,” the priest says, tense under the pressure of the barrel being pointed center-mass. I reach out as well, lowering the gun slowly until Nico complies, until he’s sure that the priest is going to play along. Once it’s gone, the priest sighs. “I suppose I won’t be seeing you in confessional over this in the next couple of weeks,” he mutters, climbing to the altar for our strange, spur-of-the-moment, gunpoint union.
“I only confess to shit I feel guilty about. And marrying her, whatever it takes, isn’t one of them.”
We exchange looks, and I share a smile with him as he pulls me close and kisses me again. The priest sighs, a little off-put. These are not chaste, godly kisses to be exchanged in the house of the Lord. Hell, I don’t think Nico ever learned to kiss like that, like the Devil showed him how to treat a woman right.
The priest is too calm and resolved, probably from his own years of dealing with the Mori family. Maybe this isn’t even the first time he’s been held at gunpoint by one of them. He motions us up to the front of the altar.
“Do you have a witness?” the priest asks.
“Well Christ, father, is God always watching or is he not?”
“He is, but so is the state of New York, and they require at least one witness.”
And Nico is about to march out into the parking lot and flag down some poor pedestrian at gunpoint, but the father stops him and brings someone from the back office out to watch. A little old lady shuffles out in bright mauve and gaudy jewelry, looking giddy at being summoned to an impromptu wedding, and apologizing for not being in her Sunday best, while I’m standing here noticeably pregnant in just a floral print maxi skirt and white spaghetti straps.
“Well, usually this begins with dearly beloved ,” the priest says, “but I suppose we can just go with Martha —you are brought here today to witness the…holy union…”
I bite down on a teary laugh at it all. My baby is going wild, and as the priest speaks, ad-libbing a little to lighten the mood, I bring Nico’s hand to my belly to let him feel. His expression is intense and burning as his baby kicks against his hand, and all at once, looking at him here in the middle of our impromptu wedding vows, I am suddenly certain everything is going to work out just fine. For just a few moments, all my anxiety and gnawing doubts evaporate, and I breathe in the easy relief that a few little hiccups like health scares and mafia men and that looming hurdle of childbirth are not going to get in my way.
I’m going to be this man’s wife, and I’m going to give him a baby, and then maybe another, and then maybe another. I can see it all so clearly for this one, perfect second.
“I suppose you don’t have vows prepared?” the priest asks dryly.
“No, but I can riff,” Nico says, which makes me laugh through the tears I’m trying to wipe away.
“Ava,” he says, just gathering his thoughts—and him just saying my name makes me cry like an idiot, when he hasn’t even promised anything yet. He laughs and pulls me to him, lets me cry against his chest. This isn’t fair. It absolutely isn’t fair. Nico would do this to me when my hormones are making me so emotional, when anything more emotionally charged than a greeting card makes me blubber like an idiot.
His words murmur low against the top of my head, his hand sprawled on my back. It feels like it’s just the two of us. “Every day for the past few months, I’ve thought of all the things I want to give you and promise you, and it’s a long, long list. Longer than either of these people have time for, I’m sure, so let me get the important parts out of the way.” His voice dips, his confession soft and low so that no one else can hear:
“My whole life, Ava, I was raised to do one thing—and when I was young, I thought that thing was run a business. I thought we just called it family, and we dressed it up in all these little bullshit traditions and tried to make it honorable, when deep down, we all knew it was just numbers in offshore accounts going up, and problems in cement shoes going down. Business with a side of bloodshed. But it’s not just business. It’s not about the numbers. Maybe I was raised to run a business, but I was born to have a family. It’s in my blood. That’s all I want, Ava. It’s all I’ve ever wanted, and I want it with you. I want to have something that’s just mine, that money can’t get me and can’t cost me. I want a family, Ava. Our family. And Salvatore, he can have the rest of them. Everything I want to protect and love for the rest of my life, it’s right here.”
It’s like Nico knew every word I wanted to hear, lying awake at night for months, dreaming and dreaming about something I thought would never come true, that Nico would want a family with me. That we could somehow put everything else behind us, and it could be just us and our baby, even if the rest of the world was ash.
“Do you, Nico Mori, take…”
The priest realizes he doesn’t even know my name, and kindly apologies as I give it to him. He clears his throat.
“Do you, Nico Mori, take Ava St. Clair to be your lawfully wedded wife?” he asks.
“I do,” he says, his eyes glimmering, standing too close, his voice so low and personal. “I take her.”
My heart pounds.
“And do you, Ava S—”
“I do,” I say immediately, just so I can jump into his arms and kiss him desperately. Nico and I might be the most unholy thing to ever happen under the roof of this cathedral.
The priest stands by, helpless, as we take the ceremony into our own hands.