Chapter 22 - Nico
The ringtone cuts through darkness like a blade. At this hour, it’s not information. It’s a grenade with the pin already pulled.
“Yeah.” My voice comes out rough, prepared for casualty reports.
“Faith is in labor.” Marco’s tone is controlled, but there’s urgency bleeding through. “Started an hour ago. They’re at Northwestern Memorial.”
The relief hits so suddenly my hand actually trembles. Not death. Life. My nephew arriving, coming into the world.
Marisol’s body tenses against mine, reading my physical tells the way she reads threats—instinctively. Her honey eyes open, immediately scanning for danger. She’s learned to read my body the way I read a room.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.” I shift the phone, my free hand finding her shoulder, thumb unconsciously tracing the mark I left there hours ago. “My brother’s wife is having her baby.”
She sits up, the sheet pooling at her waist. “You need to go to Chicago.”
Statement, not question. Of course I need to go. Luca’s child is arriving. The family is gathering like a unit responding to a priority call. It’s what Rosettis do.
Except.
Cesar’s eyes yesterday, calculating, measuring, identifying weakness.
The way he touched Marisol’s face, claiming territory he doesn’t own.
The framing for murder that hasn’t materialized yet but makes my trigger finger itch with certainty it’s coming.
Every instinct screams that leaving my position now means returning to find her destroyed.
Or discovering her body staged like the Zayas girl, another message written in death.
“I can’t come,” I tell Marco woodenly. “Not with the current threat level.”
“Stay,” he says, the single word carrying command authority. The Don ordering his soldier to maintain position. “I’ll set up video when the family assembles.”
Line terminated. Marco doesn’t waste words on decisions already made.
I set the phone down, but the weight of abandoning my brother sits like shrapnel in my chest. I’ve never missed a family gathering.
Not once since Afghanistan. After the massacre, our parents’ blood painting the walls while I was thousands of miles away, I swore I’d always be there.
Every gathering, every crisis, every moment that matters.
But Marisol presses against my side, her warmth reminding me why I can’t leave.
“You should be there,” she says quietly, reading the tension in my jaw, the way my hands want to form fists.
“No.”
“Nico—”
“I’m not leaving you.” The words come out harder than intended, more growl than reassurance. I soften them with touch, pulling her against me, noting how perfectly she fits in my arms. “Not with Cesar maneuvering. Not now.”
She doesn’t argue, but guilt shadows her features. She recognizes the cost.
We drink milky over-sweetened coffee for what feels like an eternity.
The video call comes through at 0320 hours, and suddenly my laptop screen fills with Rosetti chaos in high definition.
The hospital waiting room looks like my family has established a forward operating base.
Marco commands a corner chair he’s transformed into a command post, suit jacket removed, sleeves rolled up.
Valentina is beside him, taking in everything through the screen, her strategic brain whirring loud enough to hear.
Dante holds his position against the wall, baby Antonia secure on his shoulder. Six months old, already adapted to her father’s silence. He meets my eyes through the screen, one nod communicating everything: You should be here. Necessity prevents it. Understood.
Ana offers a careful greeting from beside Dante.
“Brother.” Alex’s voice cuts through first, because Alex always takes point on chaos. He’s claimed two chairs like conquered territory, green eyes sharp despite the hour. “Miami’s upgraded your appearance. You actually look human instead of like a recruitment poster.”
“And you still look sloppy,” I manage, attempting to match his energy despite feeling like I’m watching my family through bulletproof glass. Present but separated.
Marisol guffaws behind me, and Alex’s eyes shift, locking onto a target behind me. His eyebrow lifts.
“And who,” he draws out the words with obvious satisfaction, “is that?”
Marisol. She’d tried to stay outside the camera range, but the penthouse’s open floor plan betrayed her. I adjust the laptop angle, bringing her into frame.
She’s wearing my shirt like claimed territory, hair wild from sleep and sex, coffee mug gripped tight. She looks nothing like the tabloid coverage my family has reviewed. She looks like a woman I’ve marked, claimed, fucked into my mattress until she screamed my name.
The family’s reaction is immediate and revealing.
Alex grins wider, wolfish. “The party princess herself. I’ve studied the files. ‘Heiress Gone Wild.’ ‘Yacht Meltdown.’ Exceptional entrance, making headlines.”
The words land like rounds finding their target. Beside me, Marisol’s spine straightens. Something violent coils in my chest. Family or not, no one targets what’s mine without consequences.
Alex pulls Emma into his lap, and she lets out a little squeak, then gives Marisol a shy wave.
I remember that until a few short months ago she was a servant and has probably never met an A-list celebrity like Marisol.
Her cheeks pink, and I note the embarrassment, but I’m not sure if she’s ashamed of herself or my heiress.
Marco’s silence carries more weight than Alex’s words. The Don’s eyes move over her through the screen, measuring, calculating. When Valentina whispers something in his ear and he doesn’t respond, maintaining his lock on the camera, I read his analysis.
I am compromised.
“Marisol Delgado,” she says, chin up, not attempting charm or deflection. Just existing in my space, accepting their judgment.
Dismissal radiates through the connection. My brothers see the reports, the reputation, the liability. Not the woman who held me through Afghanistan flashbacks. Not the strength beneath her chaos.
Marisol takes a step closer, then sits beside me on the mattress. My hand finds her knee below the camera’s range, squeezing once. My family’s approval is not required.
“What’s the ETA?” I redirect.
“Soon,” Marco says, his first word since the connection was established. “Faith and Luca have been inside for two hours.”
The conversation shifts to waiting. Alex performs elaborate complaints about hospital coffee. Dante walks a slow patrol with Antonia, rocking her back to sleep. Maria arrives with containers of food, immediately losing her composure when she spots me on screen.
“You should be here!” She deploys her Italian-English hybrid assault. “That baby needs his uncle!”
“Maria—”
“Don’t you Maria me, Nico Rosetti. You bring that girl to Chicago where we can feed you both properly. Look at you, starving boy, and her…” Maria peers at Marisol through the screen. “Skinny as spaghetti.”
Beside me, Marisol makes an amused sound.
Maria leaves, and I watch my family through this screen.
Their chaos, their constant chatting over the top of each other, the way they maintain formation even in a hospital waiting room.
Beside me, Marisol watches too, and I wonder what she thinks of us all.
A unit that fights and protects in equal measure.
Something she lost when her mother died.
The door opens in Chicago, and everything stops.
Luca stands in the doorway still in surgical gear, and I’ve never seen my brother like this. His hands, the weapons that have eliminated more targets than anyone in that room, are shaking. Actually shaking, like a sniper with a compromised grip.
His pale blue eyes, usually flat as a predator’s, are bright. Wet.
“Theodore,” he says, and his voice cracks on the name. Luca Rosetti, the family’s ultimate weapon, who discusses elimination over oatmeal, can’t get the words out. He tries again. “Seven pounds, four ounces. Faith is…”
He stops. Swallows. Cannot continue. The tremor in his hands intensifies.
“She’s perfect. He’s perfect.” The words emerge rough, wonder breaking through. “He has her eyes. She named him for her father. Judge Theodore Winters.”
The room erupts. Maria sobbing, Alex on his feet embracing Luca, whose hands are still trembling against Alex’s back. Ana is smiling against Dante’s shoulder while he holds their daughter tighter. Through the screen, I process it all. The joy, the celebration, the ache of not being there.
Marco pulls Luca into a brief, hard embrace, his hand gripping our brother’s neck with force that speaks louder than words.
“Uncle Nico needs to see him,” Luca says suddenly, remembering the connection.
He holds up his phone, showing the delivery room.
Faith appears exhausted but radiant, and in her arms, Theodore.
Tiny, wrinkled, face expressing newborn protest at the harsh world.
Named for the judge who once stood against us, still estranged from his daughter, but now honored through his grandson.
“Say hi to Uncle Nico,” Faith says, voice warm despite exhaustion.
Something cracks in my chest. Uncle. Again. A title I wear at a distance. And I’m watching through a screen at 0400 hours in Miami while my family celebrates without me.
Beside me, Marisol’s breathing changes. When I check, tears track silently down her cheeks. She’s watching my family love each other, recognizing what she lost, what her mother’s death ended. Her hand covers mine.
The ache doubles. For the distance. For her loss. For the nephew I can’t hold. For the way this birth has cracked open the family’s most lethal weapon.
“He’s perfect, Luca,” I manage. “Strong genes. You did good.”
Luca actually smiles. Not his usual sharp thing but something soft, something recalibrating. “I’m a father. I have a son.”
The words impact everyone. This is Luca, who we thought was too damaged for any kind of normal life, holding his child, transformed into something none of us predicted.