16. Nico
NICO
“Been like that since Friday,” Dante is still grumbling about cops raiding his bars, but I’ve stopped listening a long time ago.
My eyes keep darting towards the rows of pews, searching for Lydia and her red dress. I didn’t want to walk away while she had to face the trophy wives on her own.
As I look over the flow of people settling into their seats, I spot Dante’s wife and her little flock of vipers easily enough. One of them waggles her fingers at Anastasio. He cocks an eyebrow and smirks in response, but does nothing else.
But Lydia is still nowhere to be seen.
I should’ve put Anastasio on Lydia to fend them off, or at least distract the ones who were willing to cuckold their husbands with him.
“I trust that you know how to deal with the cops,” I finally snap at Dante. “Do what you have to do to get them to stop. Bribe them if you have to, talk to the precinct heads to get them reassigned if necessary. You knew how to handle them for my father, I expect you to do the same for me.”
“I have, Don Nico.” Urgency moves into Dante’s voice. “But these aren’t the usual patrol cops. They’re from the OCCB. And I haven’t even started about the Diamandis Family putting pressure on us in Red Hook.”
I raise my hand. “And you won’t. There’s a time and place for these reports, and church isn’t the place for it. Do I make myself clear, Dante?”
“Crystal, Don Nico.” Dante nods.
The organ starts its low warning swell, and I finally walk away from Dante and the rest. My eyes scan one row after another for Lydia, but I still don’t see her anywhere. Anastasio catches my concerned gaze, and I tilt my head to ask without words.
He tilts his head in the direction of the confession booths, and I see that one of them has a closed door.
My chest relaxes, and I find myself letting out the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.
But as I take my first step towards the confession booths, Father Valdoni intercepts me.
“Nicolas.” His voice is gentle but firm, like it always was whenever he caught me acting out of line at Sunday school. “Mass is about to start. You need to take your seat.”
“I need to get my wife,” I say. “It’s her first mass and it would be highly inappropriate for me to be there without her.”
“In that case, be quick about it.” Understanding slips into his voice. “I would prefer not to interrupt or delay the Rites for your sake.”
“I’ll make it quick, Father.”
I walk towards the secluded alcove where the confession booths stand in a row, and test the door to the one that I suspect she’s hiding in.
Through the sliver of space, the light touches her soft green eyes. I steal a glance back at the rest of the congregation and then step inside.
Lydia is sitting on the little wooden bench in the dark, and there’s a soft cream scarf draped over her bare shoulders. She doesn’t say anything as I close the door behind me. She doesn’t have to. The unmistakable hurt in her eyes tells me everything I need.
Anger wraps its fist around my heart when I see it, and my hand twitches towards the gun I always keep tucked in my jacket.
There’s no more fight in her voice when she speaks. “Will you always find new ways to humiliate me like this, Nico?”
I kneel down until we’re level with each other, and take her hand in mine. “Humiliate you?”
“Don’t lie to me, please.” Her voice is small and quiet. “You knew this dress was inappropriate for church, and yet you made me wear it anyway. Why?”
“You know why, Lydia,” I reply. “You knew the moment you asked the seamstresses to make it like this.”
Jaw tight, she looks away but keeps her hand in mine. “So you are humiliating me.”
“No, piccola,” I say. “I wanted you to wear this dress because I saw the way you stared at yourself in it, even incomplete. Because I heard how your voice changed when you thought I was about to ruin it.”
My grip tightens around her hand, and I rest my thumb against her pulse.
“I wanted you to wear this dress because I knew you liked it.”
She takes a long trembling breath. “You could’ve told me about baring my shoulders. It would’ve made those wives hate me less.”
“Those wives will hate you even if you’re dressed like a fucking nun,” I tell her.
She shakes her head slightly. "I don’t belong here, Nico.”
"Yes you do, piccola."
"No, I don’t.” A shadow of the edge I’ve come to crave drips into her voice again.
“I don’t know the rules of your world. I don’t know how any of this works.
I’m drowning, Nico, and I can’t even tell you because half the time I don’t know if you’d care or if you’ll just use it to make my life even worse. ”
The words come out of her in a rush, and then she stops like she's said too much.
I rise up a little higher and reach up to turn her face back towards me. But she still refuses to look at me. The dim light seeping into the confessional booth catches the wet shine in her eyes.
“If I didn’t care, piccola, I wouldn’t be here with you right now.” My hand brings hers up to my lips, and I plant a kiss on every fingertip. “And don’t you ever let me hear you say that you don’t fucking belong here. I put a ring on your finger, and a crown on your head. I fucking chose you.”
“Because you needed my silence,” she reminds me. “Not because you really wanted me.”
“What else do you fucking need me to do to prove that I want you?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” she whispers.
Outside, the organ starts to play the first notes. The introductory rites are about to start. I look back at the door, almost half expecting Father Valdoni to pull it open to come get me. But the door remains blissfully still as the music fills the cathedral.
We need to go, but instead of standing up, I scoot closer to her in the tiny space. She parts her legs to give me the room. Her light warm scent fills my nostrils, and the air between us starts growing thicker and warmer from proximity.
"I didn’t mean to humiliate you, piccola.” My voice comes out lower than I expect. “And I am sorry. Truly.”
Lydia finally looks at me. “Was that an apology, Don Nico? I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“An apology? No,” I tell her as I start kissing her knee. “This is an apology.”
My hands find the hem of the red silk and push it up her thighs slowly. Lydia’s eyes widen when I push her legs wider to expose her completely to me.
“Nico, we’re at church. This is inappropriate.”
"I don’t care about being appropriate anymore, piccola." I press my mouth to the inside of her thigh, higher and higher, until she starts to shudder. "Do you know what I care about?”
She bites down on her own lip, all while her knees part for me.
“I care that you never feel like you need to hide when you're with me ever again."
She looks at me, and the rawness in her eyes dissolves away into a warm hunger that climbs into her cheeks. Her tongue darts out to wet her lips, and I hook my fingers into the thin scrap of lace at her hips.
"Nico," she whispers.
“Remind yourself again what you are, piccola.” I nip at her thighs, leaving a warm and wet trail with my tongue along the tender flesh.
Her hands slide into my hair and then curl. I raise her leg over my shoulder so that she has nowhere else to go, and start kissing forward towards her slick wet heat.
“Your wife,” she breathes, trembling.
“Say the whole thing. Say that you’re my wife until you fucking believe it.”
“I’m your wife,” she says obediently.
I push her thighs wider and lower my mouth to her, and find her already soaked. “And what does my wife want me to do right now?”
“To make her feel good," she mews.
“Good girl.”
And that's the last thing I tell her before I start to feast.
The first taste of her sweet slit makes her eyes roll back as she moans softly.
My tongue runs in a straight line from her ass to her clit, lapping up every sweet drop before swallowing them greedily. Her legs around my head tighten and pull me closer. I reach up to grip her hips and pull her closer towards me while my mouth opens her further.
The organ music rises faster and louder until it’s loud enough to hide the moans bubbling out of Lydia’s throat as I work her with my mouth.
The scarf slides off one bare shoulder and she either doesn't notice or doesn't care. Her head tips back against the wall of the booth, and her hips chase my mouth for more contact.
"You taste so fucking sweet," I murmur against her. "So fucking good. Do you know what you taste like?"
“Like your wife?”
“You’re goddamn right.”
I slide one finger into her while my tongue keeps moving, and she clenches around me, tight and hot. A high desperate whimper breaks loose before she can stop it while the organ swells louder beyond the curtain.
Outside the confession booth, the mass begins. And while the entire congregation rises to their feet, I kneel between Lydia’s legs in worship while she comes apart under my mouth in the dark.
I feel her climbing. Her thighs are starting to shake. Her grip in my hair tightens, and I know she's seconds away from screaming.
“Come for me, piccola.” I give her clit one last swirl of my tongue, and then clamp my hand over her mouth.
She screams into my palm, sound muffling into nothing while her body bucks and sways violently from the orgasm ripping through her.
I drink down every shudder, every sound, and every drop.
But that’s when a new sound suddenly cracks through the church.
It starts like a clap of thunder, sharp and rhythmic.
A second later, a new chorus of screams rises up. My hand remains on Lydia’s mouth as I pull away from her and look back, listening to the unmistakable sound of gunshots ringing out amidst a rising tide of screams.