29. Nicholas
Nicholas
The late-afternoon sun cut through Michael's office windows at a hard angle, throwing long, jagged shadows across the mahogany. Nicholas stood in the doorway, one shoulder against the frame, weighted in a way that had nothing to do with being tired.
He'd been trying to outrun this feeling for two weeks.
It kept catching him anyway.
"Hey, Uncle. Do you have a few minutes?"
Michael looked up from his desk. His expression softened immediately—the particular shift that meant he'd already read the room before Nicholas had said a word. "For you, always. Sit."
Nicholas sank into the leather chair across from him. He looked at his hands for a moment before he looked up.
"I'm having a hard time. I keep trying to focus and put things into perspective, but it gets harder every day, not easier."
He told Michael about Friday night. Vince, the club, Carol.
He described her accurately—stunning, interesting, sexy, exactly the kind of woman who would have had his full attention six months ago.
He heard himself speaking and felt the distance between who he was describing and who he actually was right now, and the gap between them was uncomfortable.
"I felt nothing," Nicholas said. "I wanted to leave from the moment we sat down. I went through the motions for Vince's sake and went home alone and stared at my ceiling."
He paused.
"I can't stop thinking about Olivia." His voice dropped. "It almost doesn't make sense to me. She's still technically married—though Alexandra is handling that now, and I'm glad she has her. But Uncle, what I'm trying to say is—no one has ever made me feel the way she does."
He stopped. Looked for the words that were precise enough to carry the weight of what he meant.
"When I'm with her, I feel a contentment I can't wrap my head around.
It doesn't matter what we're doing. Watching TV.
Fancy restaurant. Pizza on the couch. It doesn't matter.
The sex is beyond anything I've ever experienced—and that's saying something—but it's not about that.
It goes deeper than that. It's something lasting.
Something I don't have a clean word for. "
Michael didn't look surprised.
He leaned back slowly, a knowing smile moving across his face with the ease of a man watching something he recognized from the inside.
"You already know what it is, Nicholas. You're just hoping I'll give it a less dangerous name." A beat. "Pretending won't make it any less real."
Nicholas stared at him.
He felt his face give it away before his mouth did—felt the thing he'd been refusing to name rise up through his chest with the quiet inevitability of something that had been true for a while and was now simply done waiting.
"I love her."
He said it out loud for the first time.
The words landed in the room and stayed there, solid and irreversible.
"Now what do I do?"
He'd built his entire adult life on logic and discipline and deliberate forward motion. Love had never been part of the architecture. He'd watched it complicate other people and told himself, with complete sincerity, that it wasn't for him.
"I don't have time for love. I know I feel it—but honestly, it scares the hell out of me."
Michael let out a low, dry laugh. Warm underneath it.
"Of course it does. I laugh because I see myself in you before Verónica.
" He leaned forward, elbows on the desk.
"Do I look unhappy to you? Think back to before she came into my life.
Was I this content? I resisted what you're feeling now for months.
Your mother helped me see what I was really doing—which was running from something real because real things are harder to control than temporary ones.
" He held Nicholas's gaze. "You've worked relentlessly for everything you have.
Money will never be a problem for you again.
But all of it—every deal, every building, every number on every spreadsheet—none of it fills the void you'll feel if you let her slip away. "
The office went quiet.
Nicholas sat with it. The emptiness Michael was describing was not hypothetical. It was exactly what the last two weeks had felt like—the precise shape of the thing he'd been trying to outrun and couldn't name until right now.
"Thanks, Uncle." He sat forward, something releasing in his chest. "I think I see it clearly. I need to think through how to handle it—but whatever I walked in here carrying, I'm not carrying it the same way anymore."
"You know I'm always here," Michael said. He stood, straightening his jacket. "Now let me go home to the love of my life. If you want to talk more later, come over. We'll open a bottle of DRC and sit with it."
"That sounds perfect. I was going to go out with Vince again, but I'm not in a clubbing mood."
Nicholas pulled out his phone to text Vince.
He saw the notification and went still.
Missed call. Olivia. Voicemail.
He pressed play and listened. With each word, the warmth that had just settled in his chest curdled into something cold and sharp and absolute. His hand tightened around the phone. His jaw set. He could feel the anger moving through him like current finding a path.
"Oh my God," he hissed.
He dialed her immediately. She answered. "Tell me what happened."
He listened without interrupting. When she finished, he said, "Stay where you are. I will call you back in a few minutes." He hung up and looked at Michael.
"Little Frankie. He threatened her again. This time, he put his hands on her."
He didn't wait for a response. He called the hotel manager at The Tampa Edition directly. "I want two of your best security people in the bar watching a woman until my people arrive." He described Olivia. "She's at the bar with another woman. Thank you."
He hung up. His breath was uneven.
Michael was already on with Grant before Nicholas had pocketed his phone.
"How do you want to handle it, Nicholas?" Michael asked, his voice shifted now—sharp, professional, the businessman gone and something older and more certain in its place.
"Jim and Dan. They should still be in Tampa."
Michael relayed it without hesitation, then: "Where is she?"
"Market at Edition bar. The Tampa Edition. They know the place."
Michael spoke into the phone, voice steely. Hung up. Met Nicholas's eyes. "They'll be there within the hour."
Nicholas called Olivia back. He kept his voice steady for her—calm, certain, the voice of a man who had everything under control—while behind his eyes he was seeing Little Frankie's hands on her arm and feeling something he'd never allowed himself to feel before on someone else's behalf.
Rage. Clean and specific and entirely personal.
When he ended the call, he looked at his uncle.
"This has to end."
Michael nodded once and dialed Vincent.
The conversation was short. Direct. The kind of call that didn't require elaboration because the people on both ends already understood the language.
"Come on," Michael said, standing. "Let’s go to my house. Vincent will meet us there. This stays between us."
Michael's library was quiet, like rooms that have absorbed serious conversations over many years and hold them in the walls. Soft lamplight over leather-bound shelves. Good scotch on the table. The particular hush of a space where things get decided.
Vincent arrived within the hour. He didn't bother with greetings. He sat, his eyes the color and temperature of flint, and waited.
"Tell him," Michael said.
Nicholas reported it cleanly—the harassment, the physical contact, the specific threat tied to messing up her pretty face. He watched his uncle's jaw tighten as he spoke, the silence in the room thickening with each detail.
When he finished, Vincent said, "Those scumbags." Two words carrying the full weight of a verdict. "They were warned."
Nicholas stood. His hands had found their way to fists without him consciously deciding anything. "I want Little Frankie. Let me teach him something about what happens when you put your hands on a woman."
Vincent rose too. He was taller and older, and carried the gravity of a man who had made decisions with permanent consequences and lived with them without apology.
"No, Nicholas." His voice was flat and final. "This is not your world. This is mine. I will handle it. I don't want you anywhere near this—not to mention you would be the first person the police would look at."
His gaze swept the room. Michael. Nicholas. Back again. "No one in this room speaks of this again. To anyone."
Nicholas nodded. The frustration was real, and he didn't pretend otherwise—but Nicholas knew Vincent was right, and part of being the man he was trying to become was knowing the difference between wanting to act and knowing when to stand aside.
Vincent turned toward the door.
"Aren't you going to have a drink with us?" Michael asked.
"No time." He didn't turn around. "Sunday. And Nicholas—take care of that girlfriend of yours."
Nicholas felt something move through his chest at the word. Simple, specific, and entirely accurate.
"I will," he said.
The door closed. The house settled back into silence.
Michael looked at him for a moment. "Single malt."
"Absolutely."
He poured two neat. Nicholas took his, let the burn move through him, and sat with the quiet for a moment before he spoke.
"Can I ask you something?"
Michael looked at him over the rim of his glass.
"Do you think what I feel for her is real? Or is it the situation—the intensity of it, the danger, all of it pulling me in?" He paused, searching for the honest version of the question. "How did you know with Verónica? How did you know it wasn't just the circumstances?"
Michael was quiet for a moment. He turned his glass slowly in his hand.
"The circumstances fade," he said finally.
"The danger ends. The intensity settles.
And then you find out what's actually underneath all of it.
" He looked directly at Nicholas. "With Verónica—when things got quiet, when the drama was gone, and it was just the two of us in an ordinary room on an ordinary evening—I still couldn't imagine the room without her in it.
" He let that land. "Can you imagine your life without Olivia in it?
Not the version with Little Frankie, the lawyers, and the urgency.
Just—your life. Your quiet. Your ordinary Tuesday morning. Is she there?"
Nicholas didn't have to think about it.
"Yes," he said. "She's always there."
Michael nodded slowly. The knowing smile returned—softer this time, without the irony. Just the expression of a man watching someone arrive at a place he'd been waiting for them to reach.
"Then you have your answer," he said. "Now drink your scotch and figure out how to tell her."
Nicholas looked into his glass for a moment. Then he said, "Uncle—when this is over, do you think I could have Jim as a permanent detail? I think it's time I had someone like Grant around me."
Michael smiled. A real one. "Yes. I think you might be right. When this is settled, I'll arrange it with Grant."
Nicholas finished his drink.
For the first time in two weeks, he knew exactly what he wanted.
And this time, he wasn't going to run from it.