24. — don’t touch. #2
Frankie peered around, unconcerned with the strangers and some familiar faces moving about them, as Nico checked in his heavy overcoat and her fur shawl at the coat room.
The quiet teenager, maybe fourteen if that, took the items with a tentative smile but she didn’t meet his eyes as she handed over the tag with the appropriate number to collect the items on the way out.
“Tall tree,” Frankie noted of the Christmas fur in the entry.
It stood at least twenty feet high. Decorated in only red and gold, just the way Giorgio liked. Some shit never changed.
“Why does this look so familiar?” she asked as if to herself.
“It does, doesn’t it?” Nico returned, following a step or so behind Salvatore.
“Even the marble...”
Oddly familiar.
“That’s because when I made the order for a hundred slabs of Calcutta marble for Carina’s closet,” Salvatore told them over his shoulder, “someone else decided I should add an extra three hundred slabs onto the order for him so he could similarly replicate my entry that he liked so much.”
Frankie looked at Nico who just huh’d under his breath.
“Guess who also paid for it?” Salvatore asked.
He clearly didn’t mean for them to answer, so they didn’t.
“That’s kinda fucked,” Nico murmured in Frankie’s ear.
Her expression said the same.
“How often does things like that happen, Daddy?” Frankie asked.
“More than I want to discuss,” Salvatore grumbled. “And so, we won’t.”
The closer the three came to the dining hall, the more Nico noticed the stares and whispering.
It couldn’t be helped that people noticed him, given the house belonged to his father and he happened to be the son that didn’t get shown off as the pride and joy of the Russo family.
Not that he minded. He just didn’t realize how it would feel to be stared at and whispered about when he was something more than the problem kept hidden away.
“You okay?” Frankie asked Nico.
He winked down at her. “Great, babe.”
She didn’t need to know the difference.
Reaching up to wipe a piece of fuzz from his lapel, he heard the first comment of what would likely be many over the evening. “Is that an engagement ring?” someone hissed.
Frankie didn’t appear to hear the comment, or another one that soon followed when she reached up to playfully pat the side of Nico’s grinning cheek.
“Love you,” she told him.
“Love you,” he said back.
Nico wrapped his arm tighter around Frankie’s waist, yanking her closer.
He had to remind himself not to touch his son which ended up being harder than he thought.
A second nature to him now. He constantly sought the spot where she carried their child because it gave him comfort and perspective when he needed it most. She didn’t seem to mind that he pulled her into him, so much so they were practically wrapped up in one another.
She just smiled sweetly when he pressed a kiss to her temple while her hand rested against the center of his chest.
“You know, you still haven’t given me an idea of what to get you for Christmas.”
He had time, so he would keep pestering her. Giorgio didn’t usually have his holiday party until New Years, but he opted for an earlier party this year, with less than two weeks to go until Christmas.
“Seriously,” Nico repeated, “what do you want?”
“What do you want?” she returned.
He chuckled darkly. “You, a bed to ruin, and a locked door for hours. I don’t like getting presents. People never gift me things I like, just what they do. You’re my ultimate treasure, anyway, so I don’t think another gift would ever measure up. Not when you’re what I’m comparing it to.”
“I better made sure that gift always happens then, huh?” Frankie drummed her red, sharp nails against his vest.
The promise did something wonderful and wicked to him. Enough that he grabbed her chin and tipped her face upward to give him better access to those red lips of hers for a kiss that had the hallway watchers whistling. The noise made Sal turn around to see what caused it.
Nico grinned, pulling away. “Get the fucking lipstick off me, would you?”
She tried to wipe it away as they entered the dining hall.
“I think that’s good,” Frankie said about his mouth.
Nico went to respond, but a familiar laugh stopped him from saying anything at all. He turned cold all over. How could she sound the same after all those years? They had been teenagers. Young, stupid teenagers. Children, practically, except children should not do the things they did together.
How could her laughter sound the fucking same? He heard his father’s raucous glee filling the room, too.
Frankie noticed the way he froze. “Nico?”
He didn’t scan the room to find the owner of the familiar laugh. He didn’t search for his father, and he paid no mind to how far ahead Salvatore had become since Nico stopped Frankie near the entryway. He put his back to the rest of the room, focusing on Frankie instead.
She mattered more. He owed her a warning.
“Remember what I said?”
“About?”
“Marco,” he said softly.
Her brow furrowed. “That he’ll do the worst?”
“It’s a damn good thing you’re beautiful, Mina,” Giorgio said loudly somewhere behind Nico. As if the whole room needed to hear it.
Nico’s eyes closed, not able to turn around lest he see her and his father and probably fucking Marco with Mina.
He had to be the reason for her attendance.
Nico needed a few seconds to gather his wits and prepare for the shitshow.
He needed to breathe and remind himself how things that happened years ago didn’t have power and control over him anymore. If he let it bother him, Marco won.
“Fucking asshole,” Nico uttered, rubbing at his temple.
Frankie tried to look around the side of him, but he quickly adjusted himself to block her view. “What’s wrong, Nico?”
“That’s her.”
“Who?”
“He brought her,” Nico tried again.
Frankie still wasn’t getting it.
“The one he fucked, Frankie.”
Her eyes narrowed dangerously. “What?”
She tried to look around him again.
Nico held her in place. “Nope, just stop.”
“Did you see her?”
“Not yet; only heard.”
He spoke too soon.
Mina’s child-like giggle, a staple of her personality that made his skin crawl now, sounded behind him. “Nicky baby, it’s been forever!”
Fuck.
He could see the fire light in Frankie. If her face hadn’t already been blended to the Gods with full glam, he bet her cheeks would be as red as her dress, and not from embarrassment.
No, that anger burned him on the spot, and hell, he knew she wasn’t mad at him.
“I love you,” he mouthed right before he turned around. “Mina,” Nico greeted the twenty-year-old waiting at his back. He kept one hand on Frankie, as if that would somehow make her stay there. “You’re looking...the same.”
Not quite. He didn’t want to be a whole prick.
The years did to her what it had done to him.
Made them taller, older, and different in a way that losing adolescence did to a person.
Their bodies filled out and they appeared a lot more like adults than the kids they’d once been.
She still looked like every teenage boy’s wet dream in a gold body-hugging gown with a slit that went so high it could be considered indecent.
Black kohl smoked out her blue-gray eyes and her painted red lips smacked around a piece of gum.
Nico, on the other hand...well, he wasn’t fourteen anymore and his dream fumed behind him.
“Marco invited you?” he asked Mina.
She smirked and shrugged. “Yeah, for old times. You know. Just for fun.”
Uh-huh.
“Weren’t you at Northwestern?” he asked.
“Dropped out last summer.”
“So, what, you show up whenever Marco beckons?” Nico questioned.
“Jealous, are we?”
“Not even close.”
Then, Mina reached out with a black, coffin manicure like she might touch Nico. He didn’t even know what she planned to reach for because he didn’t care or want it. Leaning back so she couldn’t, he shook his head.
“Nope, no. No touching,” he said, repulsed. “You had your time for all that.”
At once, Frankie made herself known by sliding around the side of Nico to tuck under the arm he automatically lifted for her. She put that hand, diamond front and center, back on his chest so it was the second thing Mina noticed after Frankie. She was the star of his show.
Mina’s stare jumped between Frankie’s smug smile and the hand Nico lifted to kiss along the side.
“You’re not trying to touch him, are you?” Frankie asked, her tone like poisoned candy; sweet but threatening. Mina’s hand dropped back to her side fast. “Don’t touch him. That’s the only time I’ll tell you.”
“Mina, this is my—”
“Oh, I’ve heard about her. The girlfriend, right?”
“Fiancée,” Frankie spoke up, now smiling sweetly. “And it’s Francesca to you.”
“That’s...news.”
“Don’t worry,” Nico told her, “Marco wouldn’t know that yet, so he couldn’t share.”
“Mmhmm.” Frankie grinned when he kissed the top of her head. “It’s a surprise.”
“Surprise,” Nico seconded, amused.
Mina shifted from foot to foot, her sky-high heels clicking with each uncomfortable movement as she met Frankie’s gaze head on. “Well, I’m the—”
“Whore,” Frankie interrupted, her smile turning deadly. “Yeah, I’ve heard.”
Mina’s mouth dropped open and that was their cue.
Marco now headed their way, finally out of Giorgio’s clutches.
Nico quickly gave Mina a passing nod as he directed Frankie through a group of guests that began exiting the dining hall at just the right time.
It allowed them to bypass Marco, while they made a beeline for Salvatore who stood next to Nico’s father.
Giorgio sat comfortably in his chair with a glass of spiked eggnog. It was the only time he drank something other than cognac.
“That was fucking terrible,” Nico told Frankie, “and I loved every second of it.”