22. — can’t take that.
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Staten Island, New York
Salvatore, Gallo Estate
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“There was what you wanted to do, and what you had to do,” Salvatore told Nico as he leaned against the front of the desk in his study. “Doing the right thing isn’t the easy option, a lot of the time.”
“Y-yeah.”
The way Nico’s word hitched had Salvatore scrubbing a hand down his face and swearing under his breath. He had not expected to arrive home to a distraught Nico waiting in the driveway to speak to him.
Salvatore tried to do the math in his head, coming up with a two month, or thereabouts, difference between what would be Francesca’s due date, and his own wife’s. He thought one newborn in his fifties would be a lot to handle and adjust to, but two? Weeks apart?
The longer Salvatore stayed silent, mulling over his thoughts and feelings on the bomb that had just been dropped at his feet, the more restless Nico became on the white couch.
Sunk deep into the cushions, his leg rested over his bouncing knee, and his gaze locked on the windows behind Salvatore.
But his mind, that went somewhere else. He could see it in his eyes.
Nico barely even noticed the dog sleeping at his feet.
Stella the cat, sitting on the edge of Sal’s desk, nibbled at the hair between her pink toe beans as if she didn’t have any concern for it all.
Nico drew in a shaky, wet breath, sniffling hard after. He used the heel of his palm to wipe away the tears that spilled down his cheeks. “Fuck.”
“Well, the time for crying is done,” Salvatore murmured, “as that’s not going to help now.”
“I’m s-sorry.”
Oh, he knew.
Nico’s guilt and everything else he felt about the situation permeated the room with heaviness and turmoil. Salvatore did not think for one second that it had been easy for Nico to get in his car, drive here, and tell his girlfriend’s father that he’d gotten her pregnant.
But he did it. Sal respected that. It counted for something.
“I tried. I did everything right, Sal. I—”
“Not everything,” Salvatore countered, but not unkindly. “At some point, things were not as they should be, if this is where we find ourselves.”
Condoms, he meant. He wasn’t going to spell it out. Who the fuck was Salvatore to talk, anyway?
He bet, in fifty other lives where the two of them existed, they would still have somehow come together, and this exact thing would’ve played out repeatedly. From day one, neither had any say or control between the other. Two moths chasing the same brightly burning flame.
“Fucking inevitable,” Salvatore muttered to himself, then.
Nico’s head bobbed up, and his teary eyes watched the man across the room. “W-what?”
“Oh, this whole damned thing. Just inevitable. Bound to fucking happen, wasn’t it?”
Nico’s shoulders shuddered with his next rattling breath. “I don’t understand.”
“You’ve got to get yourself under control. The tears won’t make a plan for you and Frankie.”
A harsh breath left Nico. “I know.” He wiped harder at his face, almost seemingly disgusted that he had to do it at all. “Boys don’t fucking cry.”
Salvatore could guess who told him that nonsense. “Perhaps boys don’t, but men do. You’re sure she’s going to want to keep it?” he asked carefully.
A low, pained cry crawled out of Nico.
“Y-yeah,” the kid mumbled around a hiccup. “If she didn’t fucking want to, she would have taken the Plan B I got for her, and she wouldn’t have kept it hidden it for a month and a half after she knew for sure. I’d say so, Sal.”
Salvatore cleared his throat, ignoring the attitude that bled into Nico’s words.
But, he didn’t take it personally. He should have his feelings.
This would be, undoubtedly, something that rocked his entire world.
He’d turn twenty before he became a father, but that meant little when the mother was still a teenager herself, and a whole world of trouble piled around the boundary of their happy little bubble.
From the moment he invited Nico into the house, taking him up to the study where the two of them could have a private conversation about whatever happened, honesty came first. From beginning, to end, Nico told him everything.
How it happened, when it happened and why it happened. How he tried to fix it, how he did the right, responsible thing, and how it hadn’t happened again. He made sure of that.
And yet...
“We can only control ourselves, and our own choices and actions,” Salvatore said, folding his arms over his chest. “So, you did what you could, but you can’t control her path. Take a breath, and let yourself calm down, Nico.”
“I’m tr-trying,” Nico mumbled, still crying.
“What bothers you most?”
“There isn’t one thing.”
“Well, start somewhere,” Sal urged.
He was not going to get past whatever he was stuck on if he just sat there with it and didn’t let someone else hold onto the weight for a while. Sal could hold it, if Nico just gave it to him.
“You want the whole fucking list, or what?”
“Nico...”
“It happened. I’ve fucked more girls than days of the year, probably, and that’s never happened to me.”
Salvatore drummed his fingers against the side of his face, mulling the statement over. “Okay, so that explains why you’re pissed at yourself, anyway.”
Nico scoffed brokenly. “A fucking joke.”
“Not a funny one, though.”
“You think?”
Oh, there came that attitude again. “You know, you get mean when you get mad, kid.”
Nico folded his arms across his chest, and his gaze drifted to Salvatore. “Better I’m mean to you than her, right?”
“That’s fair,” Salvatore replied quietly.
Nico laughed a heartbroken sound and fell back into the couch all over again.
His hand slapped against his face in a way that sounded painful as he muttered, “For six weeks, she knew...she knew, and she didn’t tell me.
Is that what it’s going to be like for the rest of our fucking lives together?
She hides shit she knows is going to upset me until she can’t anymore? ”
“This is not quite the same as—”
“It’s not a very good start!”
Salvatore sighed loudly. “Yeah, I know.”
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
A beat of silence passed. Nico’s tears slowed.
Then, he asked, “What the fuck am I gonna do about my father?”
Salvatore needed time to work on that. “As of now, nothing.”
“What?” Nico asked, incredulous. “Didn’t you just open a safe to give me a fucking r—”
“That’s between you and I, and you and her.
Your father has nothing to do with us knowing what the right thing to do here is.
He wasn’t in that bed between you. He didn’t throw the second pill away and he didn’t show up to my home today, asking for help.
This is not about him. And besides, if you think Giorgio won’t throw the biggest fit you’ve ever seen because his nineteen-year-old problem child knocked up his consigliere’s daughter, think again. ”
“No, I do know that, it’s why I asked!”
Salvatore chewed on his inner cheek, needing the moment to think. “I’m sorry—I shouldn’t have said that.”
Nico’s brow furrowed as his hand dropped from his face. “What?”
“The problem child thing. You’re not. You’ve proven yourself to be capable, and trustworthy.
You handle your business without oversight.
You’re reliable, intelligent. Made your first million by the time you turned sixteen.
You keep yourself busy. For the most part, you’ve got your shit together.
I’d dare to call you responsible, nine days out of ten, but today... ”
Nico hissed a low fuck under his breath. “Now that’s the real joke.”
Salvatore shook his head, eyeing Nico pitifully. “No, it isn’t. You made a mistake, and you tried to fix it. You did absolutely everything you could, son. What happened after was out of your control.”
“Doesn’t feel like that.”
“I know.”
“She didn’t even ask me,” he said, his voice quaking and aching to the quiet room. “She didn’t even ask, like hey, do you want to be a dad by the time you’re twenty? Are you ready for this, too; does the house have a room for the baby; have you literally ever changed a fucking diaper?”
Salvatore suppressed the smile trying to form. It wasn’t the time to be caught thinking Nico’s thoughts were sweet.
“Do you not want her to have the baby?” Salvatore asked after a minute, trying to gauge where Nico’s feelings were in that moment. “Do you not want to be a father?”
“Right now, seriously?”
“I want you to say what you need to say to me so that you can say it to her with less...less of this, Nico,” Salvatore replied, gesturing at the young man.
“So come on, just say it. You don’t want her to have the baby.
You don’t want to be a father before you’re ready.
She had no business lying to you and you’re pissed that she did. Say it.”
Nico stayed quiet.
“Can you imagine saying those things to her?” Salvatore asked him, trying to get him to understand. “Can you truly imagine yourself saying those things to her face, knowing how it’s going to make her feel? At least say it to me so you’ve said it, and you don’t have to ever do it again. Okay?”
Nico just shook his head, jaw tight and eyes burning with resentment.
Salvatore tried again. “Come on, kid. I know you’re not the type to say hateful things to someone you love, so let’s do this. I can take it; she can’t.”
“I don’t know about that,” Nico mumbled, “because I’ve said terrible fucking things to Giorgio and Marco more than once. Things I would never say to Frankie.”
That hurt Sal.
He loved people who hurt him. Who clearly did not love him back and who never deserved him.
“Are you saying she’s even close to the same?” Salvatore asked.
Nico didn’t hesitate. “No.”
“So, say it. Whatever you need to say, however you feel, just say it.”
“I can’t.”
“Why, because I’m her father?”
“No.”
Salvatore didn’t believe that. “At this point, I might as well be yours, too. God knows I’ve spent the last several months doing things for you that your father never has—things I’d want someone to do for my son, if I wasn’t there to do it.”