28. Nico
Nico
Ineed Vicini’s neutrality in this goddamn war or I’ll be caught between two fronts, but I have hated every fucking second of this day since I left home. The fact that she texted me, that she seemed to care when I’d be home tonight meant more than she realizes.
You will be missed, and I will soon be wearing carrots.
Staring at the photograph of the children and Matilde, it feels like heavy stones are stacked on my chest. Would she really miss me? Her response to my touch gives me hope. Or is she just a better actress than Margareta was?
She’s right about one thing though. She’ll soon be wearing carats.
“It’s lovely, but you must give that girl more than expensive jewelry, Nico,” my mother says when I call to ask her opinion of the ring I sent her a picture of. “She’s not Margareta.”
“I know that.”
“I hope so,” she huffs, hanging up.
After leaving the jewelry store, I intend to go home, to spend the evening getting to know my wife better while attempting to ‘do better’ as she said.
A call from my cousin changes all that.
“If I had a pretty bride waiting for me, I wouldn’t want to spend my Seconda here either,” Eros jokes when I join him at Spice.
“Where is he?” I reply, not in the mood to joke around.
We chat briefly about other business - his father, one of my many uncles, is the Underboss of Detroit - until we reach the VIP room in the basement.
No one else is down here tonight, but Dante is in the fighting cage, wearing nothing but his fight shorts and carving an intricate crown design across the floor.
He’s carved a similar version of it into his thigh.
There’s blood everywhere, but the cuts aren’t dangerously deep.
“I found him like this,” Eros says, warily. “I didn’t know who else...”
Dante and Eros are the same age and have always been friends as well as cousins, but I’m the one people call when my brother’s demons take over. They fear he’ll lash out at them at any second. It’s when his monster turns inward that I worry.
Getting down on my haunches, I carefully take the knife from my brother’s hand. He doesn’t resist. That’s actually what scares me most.
“Thank you, Eros. You can go,” I tell our cousin. Once he’s gone, I lower my head, resting it against Dante’s. “I know you’re hurting, but she wanted to go home. What can I do to make this right between us?” I murmur.
His dark eyes find mine, a furious fire burning in their depths. “Hurting? I feel nothing.”
“How long will you lie to me and to yourself?”
Without warning, he lunges at me like a wounded wild animal, and we grapple on the floor. My blade rests against his carotid before he can wrap his powerful hands around my throat. Dante has probably killed more men with his bare hands than any Trio man alive, but one slash, and he’d be a dead man.
“Please don’t make me hurt you,” I plead, the only man I would ever beg for anything.
He gives me an unhinged smile, standing up as if the violence never happened. “Tonight is my big brother’s Seconda. We should find some girls to fuck, shouldn’t we?”
I shake my head, sheathing my knife. “I won’t make that mistake with Matilde, and I don’t believe you want that.”
His smile runs away. “How was your wedding night, brother? Better than the first one, I take it?”
“I won’t share details, but yes.”
“Bene. Have a drink with me.”
“Your leg?”
He glances down, brushing at the clotted wound until it’s weeping fresh blood again. “It’s nothing.”
***
It’s late before I feel okay leaving Dante alone at his apartment. Once I return home, I dismiss Ugo and Enio. “In the future, you don’t need my approval if my wife wants to go somewhere unless you deem it unsafe. If so, tell me about it… and explain to her why you’re concerned.”
Grunts of acknowledgement and they go, so I set the alarm.
Checking on the children, I find them peacefully sleeping in their cribs. “Your children will be my children, too.” I love her fierceness, particularly when it comes to them.
“Did you give your mama a hard time today?” I murmur to them.
When I step back into the hallway, I notice light spilling from under a closed door.
Not from our bedroom.
Her old one.
A horrible feeling hits me. I couldn’t breathe this morning when she stormed out of the dining room, not until I had my arms wrapped around her again. The children need her, but I need her, too. More than I want to admit.
“What are you doing in here?” I demand, barging in. She’s wrapped up in a silky green robe with her shiny raven hair spilling down her back, beckoning my touch.
“You told me not to wait up.”
“That didn’t mean you would sleep somewhere else.”
Her delectable mouth opens, and I just know whatever she’s going to say is going to push all my buttons. “Why does it matter where I sleep if you are only going to… NICO!” she shrieks when I lift her in my arms.
Outwardly, I calmly carry her out of the room.
Inwardly, I’m grinning like an idiot, ecstatic every time she says my name.
Switching to Italian, she blisters the paint with curses and complaints about her day and my failings as a husband so far in great detail as I stride down the hallway, relishing the feel of her warm body writhing against mine.
It’s more than a little adorable the way her voice dips when we pass the nursery only to crescendo again once I’ve closed the door to our bedroom.
I press my nose into her hair, wanting to lose myself in her sweetness, but Matilde stiffens at the closeness, so I set her on the bed and kneel beside it. “We will talk, but we will talk in here.”
“I warned you-”
“-that you would leave me, and then you said you would stay. Did you already move your things in there?” I ask, looking around. “It would set a new record for wives who hate being married to me so much they sleep in that room instead.”
“I… She did not share this room?”
“Not for long. Longer than you.”
“I did not move my things. Not yet. Even if I tried, you would use your physical strength to get your way.”
“I would never force you to-”
“You carry me places and say this is how it will be, Nico! What do you call that if not force, you asshole?”
Goddammit, she’s got a point. I don’t know that I’m capable of being the sort of husband who could ever deserve her. If such a man exists, I’d kill him because Matilde is mine. I only know how to try and fail and try again.
“I can’t correct things if we aren’t talking. Curse me, scream at me, cut me or hit me if I’m not hearing you, but please don’t put walls between us. I want… I need you here.”
Her fury softens slightly with her nod, and I carefully take her hand in mine, praying I don’t fuck this up again.
“I already spoke with Ugo and Enio when I got home. You know how I feel about your safety and the children’s, but they work for us, not the other way around. If they disrespect you, tell me and I’ll make them regret that. Ersilia was out of line today. I’ll fire her in the morning.”
“No!”
“No?”
“She is a good housekeeper. I will give her a chance to improve.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Why not? I keep giving you chances,” she points out, arching an eyebrow. Fuck, no one else can make me smile this way.
“Okay, you decide about Ersilia, and I appreciate being given another chance. What else am I doing wrong?”
“I do not want to sleep beside a stranger. We spent our first full day of marriage apart. You did not even wake me up to have breakfast with you.”
“You were sound asleep.” She gives me that look, the one I want to chase away with kisses. “We will have breakfast together whenever business allows. Okay?”
“That is better. I know that Capo is a big responsibility, but I expect you to come home for dinner when you can. The children need to see their father and not just when they wake in the middle of the night.”
“I would’ve been here, but Dante was having a difficult time.”
Her brow furrows with concern over my disturbed brother. “What was wrong?”
“Problems with a girl.” I wonder what she’d think if she knew the whole story. She befriended the De Luca women as well as Cat.
The storybook beside the bed serves as a distraction. “I noticed this yesterday before our ceremony. Where did you get it?” I ask.
“It’s the story my father would read to me at bedtime. Maddalena found a copy in English. I love the illustrations. Look how she resembles the charm.”
“The Magical Wood Nymph and Her Forest Friends,” I read. It's the exact image I'd found online, the one the jeweler had used to advertise their little website.
“Will you read this to the children someday?” Her hypnotic eyes sparkle brightly as she nods. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here for dinner. Did you leave me any carrots? It’s okay if you didn’t because I brought these home instead.”
She giggles at my nonsense and then gasps when I pull the ring box out of my pants pocket. “Your eyes still shine brighter,” I admit once she opens it.
“Why do you ask about the carrots if you bring diamonds?”
A moment’s confusion, and then I’m chuckling again. “Not carrots like a rabbit eats. Carats, like for diamonds or gemstones. A play on words, you see.”
“Oh. English,” she sighs, rolling her eyes.
“You speak it very well.”
“Your children will not sound ignorant?” she asks with a pert smile.
“Our children will speak flawless Italian and are lucky to have you for their mother.”
“Grazie,” she whispers. I slip the ring on her finger beside her wedding band, and satisfaction fills me, seeing further proof that she’s mine.
Gently, I stroke her fingers as she continues talking.
“We kept rabbits on our farm. Rabbits prefer lettuce. In the comic books I read, characters would sometimes call money lettuce. Carrots and lettuce. Diamonds and money. Did you know this?”
Laughing, I nod. “It’s an old-fashioned term, but yes.”
“I sound silly?” she asks, shyly.
“No, you’re being you. Simply enchanting. When did you read comic books? Tell me and tell me more about your day.”
She does, her honeyed accent a balm to my exhausted mind. Still kneeling at her feet, I could listen to her talk all night.
“I can speak with your sister about school if you wish,” I say after she’s mentioned one of her worries.
“No, better if I do.”
“She doesn’t like me because of Giacomo. Or does she still believe I had a role in your mother’s death?”
“We will change her mind.”
“We’ll see. Mrs. Esposito has taken an unexpected vacation, but I'll find her. The money I gave her to support Maddalena obviously didn’t go that way.”
“Or even to our mother’s grave,” Matilde adds, looking sad.
“What?”
She tells me about the day she skipped school to see her sister weeks ago after I moved her into my house and how they visited Elena’s grave together. “Are you angry?” she asks, noting my frown.
“Only at myself for putting you in a position that you thought you needed to sneak off to see her. I don’t want you wandering around the city unprotected, Matilde. It’s not safe… especially not now that you’re mine.”
We remain silent for a few minutes, her soft hand still resting on mine, before she points to the picture over the bed. “Did your first wife choose the painting or did you?”
“It’s mine. In addition to raising ten children, my grandmother was an artist.”
“Ten children?! Oh Dio,” she gasps.
“Don’t you want that many?”
She laughs, uncertainly, probably praying I’m not serious. “She was talented. She painted it?”
I’m tempted to lie, but I promised to do better with her.
“No, I did.” Matilde’s eyes widen with surprise.
“She taught me, an amateur teaching the inept. She gave me that piece after my grandfather died and before her own death. I was surprised she’d kept it all that time.
She said it was a piece of peace, and I should enjoy that when I could,” I finish in Italian.
“It is good, Nico. Do you still paint?”
I scoff. “It’s not a pastime for Made Men. I stopped playing with paints when I was thirteen.”
“Why then?”
“My father found out. He punished me for wasting my time with something that wasn’t fight training, strength conditioning or practicing with weapons. My grandfather warned my grandmother not to encourage me again, and that was that.”
She frowns. “The name is sad.”
“I suppose it is, but the cascades hold happy memories for me.”
“Tell me,” she commands, and how can I refuse this lovely girl?
“My grandfather owned a farm in DuPage County. My father’s youngest brother manages it now. When we were children, I spent my summers there with Dante and my cousins since our parents couldn’t let us go to a traditional summer camp for security reasons.”
“Did Caterina not go?”
“When she was old enough. By then, Father mostly kept me close to learn from him and prepare for my life in the Trio. The farm has many acres, and there are woods and a stream and…”
“A waterfall,” she finishes for me, smiling so sweetly my heart stutters in my chest. “Are there farm animals?”
“There were always chickens and a couple of grumpy goats. They were my favorites.”
She laughs. “You learned from them, I see.” I scowl with fake outrage, treasuring her laughter. “I miss my lambs.”
“Yes. Matilde, the shepherdess,” I murmur, unable to resist leaning in.
Like magnets, our lips are drawn together, and there's a faint hope that I’m afraid to indulge.
I love the taste of her, the way she doesn’t shy away from kissing me, from looking at me.
I’m surprised at how this simple act can fuel my lust while feeling more significant, too.
A sweet lingering heat builds until I can hardly keep from tearing her robe away and claiming more of my lovely wife.
“I like kissing you,” she declares when we part for a breath, surprising me again. “This is my… fourth kiss? Yes, four.” She holds up four fingers. “When will I lose count of them?”
So open, so earnest, so fucking addictive. My mouth runs away from me. “I don’t know. It’s only my fifth.”
“Fifth?”
I cover her mouth with mine again, not wanting to talk about the past. My hands fumble with the ties of her robe, and she quickly matches my enthusiasm, tearing at my shirt. “I shopped today,” she mentions when I stand to remove my belt and shoes.
“That’s what the card was for… Jesus fucking Christ.”
She laughs, the sweet sound imprinted on my brain as she points to the sexy nightgown she’s wearing that matches the robe. “Do you like it?”
“Like it? What man wouldn’t love it?” She grins, obviously pleased with my response. “Matilde, are you sure about having sex again?”
“After the way you left me this morning, you dare ask me that?”
Chuckling, I flick off the light switch before stripping out of my clothes.
“Why do you do that?” she asks as I tug the nightgown over her head.
I slide her panties down, my mouth watering in anticipation. “Because I’m shy.”
“Are you lying, Nico?”
Yes, I am.