28. Valeria
VALERIA
Watch yourself.
I carve out the final f and stick it onto the page with a dot of glue.
“I like how the butterfly wings form a broken heart,” Lacey says encouragingly. “Very creative.”
Everything in my collage is a broken heart—the butterfly wings, the snake scale, the inked tattoo skin. In the center, a tiny baby figurine I’d cut from one of the magazines that he’d brought me weeks ago.
“Not really,” I say. My creativity feels hollowed out. A missing limb. The only thing I’m capable of now is making sappy, cliche collages and eating buttered bread.
Speaking of.
I set my knife next to the shredded magazine pages and reach for a slice of bread from the open plastic bag next to me.
Lacey makes a noncommittal humming sound and too-casually slides her laptop toward me. “Okay, well, what do you think about this one?”
I smear a thick glob of golden butter across the cheap white bread—the kind that tastes like delicious, fluffy air—roll up the whole thing like a cigar, and eat half of it in one bite before I shift focus to the laptop screen.
Peeling kitchen cabinets and a fifty-year-old stove jump out at me. Lacey watches my face as she clicks through the listing photos.
“It’s a bit of a fixer-upper, but the school system is great.” She holds up her palm before I can protest. “You know, for the ‘future.’”
The day he left, Lacey moved in with a sleeping bag under one arm and a backpack under the other, declaring the living room couch as hers. She figured out I was pregnant by the next morning, and I’ve been too exhausted and depressed to make a real effort to convince her otherwise.
Plus, it’s nice that she keeps my pantry filled with my pregnancy craving staples—white bread and fancy butter.
Less nice is that she makes sure I walk around the living room every morning after I gag down the healthy smoothie she packs with fruits and vegetables. And when I’ve been laying on the bed for too long, she wraps me up like a grandma and leads me outside to the balcony to get some sun on my face.
I hate that she’s here—taking care of me. She shouldn’t have to do that for me. She should be fussing over Mei or her sisters. I try to tell her, but she just shushes me and sits me on the couch to watch one of my favorite movies while she hunts for a new place where I can live.
She’s looking at me expectantly. A slight headache forms. I reach for another slice of bread.
“It’s nice,” I finally say.
“You can’t stay here forever, babe. You can go anywhere, even”—she squints at the screen—“Weiser, Idaho.”
It’s as far as I can get from Chicago and New York, while still boasting of a low violent crime rate.
The perfect place to raise my child. All I need is to pull the trigger.
But I don’t want to leave without my baby’s father.
“They’re really interested in the sale,” Lacey says. “I could get plane tickets to visit tomorrow, if you wanted.”
I scratch at a piece of dried glue on one of my collages. “Maybe next week.”
She lays her hand over mine. “I don’t want you to go either,” she says, her voice cracking a bit, pricking me with the reminder that this is hard for her too. “But Nico said you have to, right?”
“Don’t say his name.”
“Nico, Nico, Nico.”
I glare at Lacey.
She glares back. “Look, babe, he sucks. He told you you have to move, and he left you.”
“He was protecting me.”
“Well, now he’s gone. He hasn’t called you or texted you even though you have your”—she gestures at my belly—“future to worry about.”
I touch my belly. My future should be here, with Nico.
But I think of getting shot at in the restaurant.
Giovanni threatening me in my bedroom—threatening my entire family.
I’m disposable to these people, and maybe I could deal with that on my own, but I have to think of another life now, no matter how hard it is.
I sigh. “Okay. You’re right.” I force a smile so unconvincing that Lacey winces a little. “Let’s get the plane ticket.”
A knock sounds at the front door.
My heart flies to my throat. Is it him?
Lacey launches to her feet. “Don’t get your hopes up.” She walks to the front door, peeks through the peephole, curses under her breath, and opens it.
Alessia, dressed in a full-length caramel fur coat and pair of giant sunglasses, looking like she’s just finished hosting a charity gala for underprivileged nepo babies, sweeps into the apartment.
She smiles at Lacey before swiveling her attention toward me, tugging down her sunglasses to peer at me over the top. Her eyes flick down to my belly, and I stiffen.
“So,” she says, “are you pregnant yet?”
Behind her, Lacey’s eyes go wide, flicking between the two of us.
“No. I’m on birth control,” I say carefully. My heart kickstarts into a gallop. Who sent her? Nico, or his dad?
“You were on birth control,” Alessia says. “Until I swapped your pills for placebo.”
I freeze, waiting for Alessia to tell us she’s joking. But the moment never comes.
Lacey takes a step toward her, hands curled into fists. “You bitch.”
Completely at ease, Alessia turns toward her, one perfect eyebrow raised above her sunglasses. “A bitch who’s trying to keep her future sister-in-law alive.”
“You mean who is trying to make sure they have a pawn to keep Nico in line,” I say over the sound of my heart hammering in my chest. “It didn’t work. He left anyway and told me never to talk to him again. I’m leaving Chicago soon. Your dad won.”
Alessia rolls her lips together and pushes her sunglasses into her hair.
“Despite what my well-meaning brother told you, he’s a hopeless wreck without you, and even Ottavio Matassa isn’t that evil.
” She pulls a little white box with the words “Early Detection Pregnancy Test” on the outside and sets it directly on top of my collage with the baby figurine.
“Nico is bringing Giorgia to Don Salvatore’s home next Saturday.
Our father will be there. You bring a positive pregnancy test, and you get your man back.
Our father will change his tune. He understands the importance of family. ”
I look between the pregnancy test, to Lacey’s pale face, to Alessia’s decidedly more confident one. “And if he doesn’t?”
“Trust me,” Alessia says, reaching for her sunglasses. “You show him you have his grandchild in your belly, you’ll have the entire force of the Matassa Family behind you. Nico will have no choice but to marry you.”
My heart catches in my throat. “What about Giorgia?”
Alessia scoffs, looking exactly like Nico for a moment. “She’ll survive. Nico hasn’t spared her a glance since they made the announcement.” She sighs. “She’s just not you, Val.”
My heart flutters with something like hope. “Meaning what?”
She smiles. “She’s not soft like you are. And Nico needs that, because deep, deep down, he’s soft too.”
I take the pregnancy tests in hand. ”I’ve never even met your father.”
“Then you better make a damn good first impression.”