Darling, Dove Preview #2
“Then, I shouldn’t have to keep doing them, right? Doesn’t that make sense, or am I not the only idiot here?”
Nico’s brow lifted at the way the kid posed the question, but he remained where he sat in the field-side stadium seat. In the aisle, Frankie’s pointed-toed heel tapped a steady beat to the cement walkway and gave him something to watch. Lest he give his attention where he wanted.
Not one of their five children would dare speak to their mother in such a way, never mind the results of someone else’s unfortunate procreation.
Nico’s relationship with their kids allowed an open table for communication, but he was the same dad who made sure when their mother spoke on anything, they listened with no questions asked.
“You run the drill until I say don’t, or it’s three more laps around the rim of the stadium,” Frankie said, bringing Nico back to her current problem. “That’ll make what now, five, before you leave the field?”
“I could just quit.”
Nico’s chin tilted up in just enough time that he saw Frankie nod subtly in response to the threat. A smirk tugged at the corner of her mouth. She knew the truth just like Nico did. Like that kid, Dylan, did.
Not one of the players still on the field at the fifth, and final, day of tryouts planned to quit anything. If they came this far with Francesca Russo, those boys intended to see it through until she hung the handwritten list of eleven players, and three alternates.
Three years into coaching the Flyers soccer team after signing on for Damiano’s entire high school career, and Frankie loved but hated it.
It gave her more time with Damiano but took her away from their home a lot.
Her success as an Olympic athlete and the Flyers continued winning streak earned the private school a reputation in soccer circles.
The school expanded to accommodate another hundred carefully selected students since Frankie signed the contract. Considering the school had already expanded in the years following her leave after her own graduation, it spoke to her influence.
“It gets worse from here,” Frankie intoned, her leg pushing into the way Nico’s hand cupped the back of her knee.
Her tapping shoe stopped as well. “This isn’t your last team.
I’ll have you in this building more than I won’t.
I expect greatness because those that get to play on this team are here to be great.
What’s earned here will take them places.
It’s your prerogative whether you want to see those places.
Your skill earned you the scholarship that got you this far, Dylan, but you have to do the rest. Quit, and lose the scholarship, go back to public school and the rest of the countless kids that won’t see scouts at their games this year. Ask me if I care.”
Nico hid the twitch of his amused lips at his wife’s unbothered disposition by looking sideways.
The new direction gave him a view of Damiano, their oldest, jogging back to group of boys that had finished their last set of drills.
He could tell just by the way his son’s expression pulled in annoyance that their boy was already sick and tired of seeing Dylan so close to Frankie.
Damiano stood on similar business to his father regarding his mother where respect was concerned, but the biggest reason for the face his son made?
Dylan was good.
Damiano, whether he would admit it...well, a whole other ballgame. True competition for the role of captain, and star, for the Flyer’s team stood fifty or so feet away from Damiano, and his son knew it. Not once, in all his years, had Damiano faced true jealousy like he currently did.
He’d always been the best. Barely had to try, though he did.
He worked harder than most knew and trained more of his waking hours than he didn’t between his two passions in life.
Those being soccer, and music. He loved it.
To come up against someone who happened to be just as talented at something you’d become known for and gaining attention that would otherwise be yours... well.
It would be a hard lesson for Damiano. Nico felt for him there.
The only mark Dylan had against him, as Frankie explained when he arrived that day after being gone out of state, missing their children’s first week of school, was the attitude.
The kid had a chip on his shoulder, something to prove, and he didn’t fit in.
The twenty-year-old Ram he drove stuck out like a sore fucking thumb amongst the vehicles driven by the rest of the student body.
His ability to see through ninety percent of his shots didn’t help with how out of place he seemed.
Frankie’s chat with Dylan continued, drawing Nico back in momentarily.
“I don’t care how good you are; you can be better,” she told him. “Trust me when I tell you, everybody can see the biggest part of you that needs bettered right now.”
“What the fuck—”
“Half a lap for every cuss today, remember?” Frankie interjected, voice calm. Dylan’s jaw popped when it shut. “You’re exceptional in every way except when you open your mouth. It’s the attitude, Dylan. Cut it out.”
“Because I don’t want to—”
“The conversation is over. It isn’t a debate. I don’t argue with children, I educate and inform. You’ve been educated and informed. Take the laps or run the drills. Choose now.”
One lap around the rim of the new stadium, an installation by an anonymous donor shortly after Francesca’s hiring, equaled two on the field. If Dylan planned to get out of the stadium before the sun set in the sky that evening, he’d take the drills.
And he did.
Frankie let out a soft sigh when the seventeen-year-old’s cleats tore up turf on the way back to the final group beginning the last set of drills for the day.
That gentle exhale followed the pat of Nico’s hand slightly higher than her knee.
Her gaze turned on him when his palm slid down to the back of her knee once more.
“Well done,” he said of the whole situation.
“You’re very distracting.”
“I thought it was helping.”
She smiled knowingly. “Oh, you know what it helps, Nico.”
He sure did. They’d get to that bit later, though.
Five kids, his responsibilities as the family’s underboss, and her job as both a mother and soccer coach always seemed to leave the two of them craving the later part of their days.
It didn’t help that he’d been back and forth between New York and Maine for most of the summer.
Home a week or less, and there the rest of the month.
He’d been foolish to hope it wouldn’t bleed into the start of their kids’ school year—and Damiano’s senior year—but he hadn’t been so lucky.
Frankie felt his absence. Every second of every day. She didn’t say it. She would never outright tell him it killed her to feel like a one-parent team because she didn’t want him to carry a bigger burden than he did, but Nico knew.
How in the hell wouldn’t he know?
They made those kids together. They got through the days and years together. They built this life together. Doing things alone wasn’t their norm. It’s not how they did anything.
“I should be home for a bit,” he informed.
In standard Frankie behavior, she nibbled at the corner of her lip before asking, “Is that a for-sure thing, or am I going to wake up in a couple of weeks to another duffle bag near the bedroom door?”
“Babe—”
“Just asking, Nico. Answer.”
“They’ve had a mess in Maine. Salvatore avoided sending me in for as long as he could. It’s handled now, so I’ll be home. Steady.”
Barring anything else, anywhere else, that might come up and need his attention with one of the family’s factions, but Maine had been the only problem popping up repeatedly.
Nico could barely remember a time when being a made man in the mafia meant something different to him than what it became. Becoming the voice and figurehead of the man running it had taken away something from what it used to be for him.
He’d wanted this. To be this. Nico never specified what it should mean once he became that thing he wanted to be, so he didn’t have a right to complain when it wasn’t always roses.
Frankie continued holding Nico’s stare like she wanted to believe what he told her, and he wished she would, too.
In almost eighteen years of marriage, he never said something he didn’t mean.
Wouldn’t make promises he couldn’t keep.
Actions spoke louder than words, so, he let history tell her the truth.
Finally, she murmured, “Missed you.”
Nico winked in response. “Everyday, babe.”
He let the tap of his pinky ring—a pink diamond set deep in a thick band of a gold—against her leg say what he currently couldn’t.
He planned on making up for his absence later and wanted her to anticipate it.
His hand returned to his lap for the first time since he showed up at the stadium.
She didn’t expect him. It’d been a nice surprise he figured she would appreciate.
Sure, he could have been waiting at home, but the week hadn’t been easy on her.
Nico fixed that.
Their youngest two, Andre and Angela, ten and eight, would be at their grandparents with Sissy until after dinner.
He grabbed Christopher from the lower Academy and brought him to the stadium so that he could keep an eye on him and he wouldn’t be running wild at home, practically alone.
The security Nico kept on payroll stayed at the house, but that wouldn’t stop their middle son, twelve until his thirteenth birthday this coming December sixth, from finding something to entertain himself with.
Lately, that had been the neighbor’s daughter.
Another thing Frankie had tried to keep him informed about over the summer as he hadn’t been home frequently enough to properly sit down and figure out all the details himself.
Just like he hadn’t been able to quite figure out the new girl sitting in the group of kids to Nico’s left a few rows back.