14. Nico
NICO
Valeria looks so peaceful when she sleeps. Eyebrows relaxed, mouth slack, a smudge of black lipstick on the pillow.
She’s not angry or annoyed.
She’s not telling me she hates me.
I stroke through her dark hair as she rests on my chest.
I get why she’s fighting this so hard—she thinks that if I don’t marry her, she’s scot-free. She can live her life how she chooses, without the dark shadow of the mob hanging over her head.
But I know better.
Her fate was sealed when her dad planned to kill my brother—earlier maybe, her role in the Family a malignant cluster of cells lurking in her blood, waiting for the right conditions to multiply.
I know better than anyone—she’s not getting out. She needs protection.
She needs me.
She just needs to accept it.
Leaving her alone on the bed, curled into a lonely ball, gives me the strangest sensation of leaving a limb behind. I click the door shut and stretch my fingers long.
In the kitchen, I prepare coffee. I’m going to need it to deal with whatever she plans on throwing at me today.
Outside my windows, the city’s waking up too, cars scurrying from one street to the next in an infinite maze, the sun slicing through the grey fog to melt the ice on the rooftops.
I wonder if Valeria’s ever left Chicago. She doesn’t seem like someone who’s travelled—not that I subscribe to any bullshit about needing to leave your hometown to find culture.
She just seems like someone who’s had their nose to the grindstone for so long that they don’t know any other way of living.
If she let me, I could unwind her. Uncoil her like a spring and let her relax and enjoy life’s simple pleasures. I could make her happy.
I’m starting to think she could make me happy too—which is fucking great, considering all she does is tell me she hates me and wants to leave.
She’s unexpected, and of course I like that. We have off-the-charts sexual chemistry. But I also like her cutting little remarks, her composure, and her values, which I know run deeper than she lets on.
How could she think I could replace her so easily?
I pour myself a cup of coffee and cast a critical eye around my place.
It looks like shit. When I moved in, I thought it would just be me—or that I’d be annoying some pain-in-the-ass fiancée by taking her here.
Instead, I have a woman, who I actually want to stick around, and the place looks like a jail cell.
At least the food is better.
I turn toward the kitchen counter and wipe it down, before grabbing a bag of flour from the pantry and throwing a handful on top.
I make a well in the center and crack two eggs inside.
Mamma, for all her flaws, made sure we could cook for ourselves.
As the water is boiling and I’m rolling out fresh dough, Valeria shuffles into the kitchen, looking very sleepy and extremely fucked, muttering into a phone against her cheek.
Her bangs stick out in wild directions, makeup smudged down her face like a raccoon, and she’s dressed in loose, black sweatpants and a hoodie. My heart skips a beat.
She narrows her eyes at me. “I’ll text you the address right now. Yeah. I love you too. Bye.” She tucks the phone into her pocket.
“Where’d you get that?” I ask tightly. Her phone should still be at the strip club. I didn’t plan to keep it from her, exactly, but I’d prefer to know that she has one.
“Lacey grabbed it for me after Henry dragged me off stage.”
So that’s the name of Stefano’s dumbass friend. I file that information away for later.
“Is that who you were talking to?”
“Yes. She wanted to make sure I wasn’t chained to the radiator.”
My irritation cools somewhat. Valeria would scoff to hear it, but I like Lacey.
I’m glad she has someone in her corner.
“Did you tell her no, but that he seems open to the idea?”
She rolls her eyes. “What are you making?”
“Fettuccine.”
“For breakfast?”
I raise an eyebrow in her direction. “You always follow the rules?”
She glances away from me, clearly at her limit for morning interactions, and heads toward the second cup of coffee on the counter.
“What time do you have to be at work today?” I ask as I slice through the flat dough to create long, thin noodles.
She takes a deep drink and sighs, her eyes focusing on me with unnerving clarity. She always looks at me like she’s peering into the darkest parts of my soul—and finding me lacking.
I like to think I’d surprise her if she looked a little further.
“I don’t. Do you have cream?”
“Just milk. In the fridge.”
I wait for her to pass before I drop the noodles into the pot on the stove. A perfect little moment of synchronized domesticity.
Valeria seems to sense it too—the ease in which we’re existing together. She pours out her milk and leans against the wall to sip from her coffee and watch me like I’m a dog that could bite.
“Do you have the day off?” I ask. It’s a Tuesday. She’s not telling me something.
“Yeah. Today, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow.” She yawns widely, showing off her pretty pink tongue, and sets her empty cup back on the counter. “I’m going back to bed.”
“Wait. What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I got fired—but you already knew that.”
I nearly burn myself on the pot of boiling water I’m pouring out in the sink. I set the noodles to the side and face her.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
She is completely unperturbed by my question as she shrugs. “It means there’s not a long list of people who would benefit from my boss finding cocaine in my purse. You set Giovanni to that?”
Giovanni.
My vision burns red.
“It doesn’t matter,” she says and walks past me toward the bedroom.
I grab her arm and swing her back to me. Anger glints in her tired eyes.
“I didn’t know about any of this. I need you to fill me in, now.”
She gives me a searching look, the kind where I’m left wondering if she’s seeing the real me, or this version of myself she’s built me up to be. “Alright, then.”
As I finish breakfast, she sits down at the kitchen table and proceeds to tell me with the clinical detachment of a mortician how she found her house broken into and her dad missing.
That, despite the storm of emotions she must’ve been going through, she had the wherewithal to search the house for evidence and collect a sample of blood to send to a paternity center for testing.
When she gets to the part where Giovanni threatened her at the train station, it’s only her matter-of-fact retelling that keeps me from flying off into a vicious rage.
How fucking dare he?
By the resentful look in her eye, she thinks I’m to blame for this, an injustice that mounts in my chest like a swelling pipe, fit to burst.
Until she gets to the part where her job found cocaine in her purse.
All the heat bleeds out of me like I’ve been plunged into an ice bath.
“Cocaine?” I ask. “You’re sure it was cocaine?”
She shrugs. “I don’t think it was sugar.”
My thoughts crash into each other as I finish the fettuccine carbonara and plate it for her.
She twirls pasta on her fork. “That’s what Lacey was calling to tell me, by the way. The paternity center got the results back. Guess who left blood at the scene of the crime?”
“Giovanni.”
Valeria laughs bitterly. “Ding, ding.” She stuffs a huge forkful of carbonara into her mouth and talks around it, “You should get a lottery ticket.”
I make my way to the bedroom in a daze.
I thought she was at the strip club to rebel. That all that talk about money was because of her shitty family making her pay for everything.
But she had just lost her job, her house, and her dad.
And her solution was to, what, make a little extra money as she tried to scare me away?
Does she really think she’d be better off without me, with the rest of her life in wreckage?
It stirs something in me—guilt, shame?
I stride to my closet and pull on clothes. In the kitchen, Valeria’s stroking one finger through the sauce left on her plate. She sucks her finger clean as she watches me with sleepy eyes.
Blood rushes south. I grind to a stop with my coat in hand. I’m glad she liked my food. I could make her more, if she wanted. I could cook whatever she wants.
“Heading out?” she asks coolly.
Focus. I kick-start my body into movement and shove my feet into boots. In a few steps, I drop to my knees in front of her.
Her expression hardly flickers as I take her hand in mine.
I don’t like this. I don’t want her resigned to her fate.
I like her little scowls and frowns, her natural suspicion of me.
Yesterday was rough, and I didn’t make it better for her, but I’m going to change that, and after she rests, I’m going to tease some life back into her.
Valeria doesn’t give up. She’s stubborn, and she’s a fighter.
“I have to make some calls. I’ll be back soon. Don’t open the door to anyone else but me, and call me if anything strange happens.”
When I kiss her fingertip, the one she sucked, her eyelashes flicker.
The moment I’m out of the apartment and onto the sunny open street, I take my phone and call Salvatore.
He waits until the third ring to pick up.
“Nico.”
“Why didn’t you tell me Valeria’s dad was missing?” I pick a direction at random and walk. I don’t have a destination in mind, only that my body needs to be in motion.
Salvatore murmurs something away from the receiver, then to me, “I wasn’t aware you were concerned for his well-being.”
“Where is he?”
“Currently being detained at the Canadian border.”
And he left his daughter and son behind. Fucking coward. “Why didn’t anyone tell Valeria?”
“Because it’s her husband’s job to keep her informed.”
I’m walking so fast down the sidewalk, I might as well be jogging. A man unlocking his car dives inside when he sees me approach.
“That’s fucking stupid,” I snap.
“Is this all you called to tell me?”
“Did you know Giovanni broke into her house?”
“I did.”
Of course he knew. I’m sure his network of spy cameras and hidden microphones gives my dear brother all the information he could ever ask for.
I laugh. It’s a harsh sound. “And you let that happen? I thought you were the boss.”
“When you chose Valeria, her dad fell under your command. And Giovanni is your friend. I assumed he was acting on your orders.”
“I’m not in charge of anyone. And Giovanni’s not my friend. Why did he destroy her house?”
“Why don’t you ask him?” Satisfaction laces through his voice.
Fucking with Salvatore and every single task he’s given me since I’ve stepped foot in Chicago has finally come to bite me in the ass.
All he had to do was wait.
I didn’t expect I’d need him. I wasn’t expecting to have someone like Valeria fall into my lap.
But I need information, and I don’t trust Giovanni or my father.
I stop dead in the middle of the sidewalk and clench my broken phone to my ear. “What do you want?”
“Compliance.”
I drag in an inhale. Exhale.
Before I was born, Salvatore had already fled New York with his mom and brother, and Father had filled the loss with poison.
I grew up understanding two things—Father’s word was law, and Salvatore, his brother, and his bitch mom were traitors.
Eventually, his mom died, then his brother, and Father’s rhetoric took on a sharper edge.
If we ever gave him the chance, Salvatore would burn everything our family stood for to the ground.
I figured Salvatore and I saw eye to eye.
But last year, a shift happened. Salvatore became a don. He was the prodigal son Father welcomed with open arms. And seeing how Salvatore operates up close has shown me that he and I are nothing alike. As much as he’d hate to hear it, he is our father’s son.
Is this Father’s game?
To let me pick a wife and then back me into a corner until I became so desperate that I’d be forced to ask for help from his carbon copy son?
I swallow battery acid. The sun peeks through the clouds, warming my face. A couple passes me on the sidewalk. Cars honk as they drive past.
Valeria’s in my apartment, drinking my coffee and eating my food.
Something has to give, and I need resources.
“Fine.”
“You’ll need to be made.”
Shackles around my wrists. My neck. A lifetime of sworn service to the Family.
I fight the pressure against my throat. “I understand.” Father would be proud.
Salvatore pauses on the other end, his silence as comprehensible as a locked door.
“Giovanni is testing the Russians. From a mic in Valeria’s house, we heard Giovanni tell her dad that the Russians wanted him dead.
While he ran, Giovanni trashed the place.
And he’s been sending Stefano out to do jobs in Russian territory. ”
“What do the Russians think?”
“As far as we can tell, the pakhan has no idea any of this is going on. Only that he considers you a nuisance for destroying his cocaine shipment and stealing his Ferrari.”
Even the gratification of knowing I got under the pakhan’s skin doesn’t dull the edge of dread carving into my stomach.
Giovanni wants Valeria and her family to consider the Russians as their enemies. It’s simple—if his only goal is to ensure she comes running into my arms for protection.
But I’m uneasy with the foreboding that there’s more at play here.
“Can I get a tracker on Valeria’s phone? And Giovanni’s?”
“I will have an encrypted phone sent to your apartment tonight,” Salvatore says easily, with all the satisfaction of one man who has another under his thumb. “And, Nico, next time I ask you to do a job…?”
I grit my teeth. “Consider it done.”
“Good to hear.”
I hang up and stand outside in the cold for a long time, wanting to go back to the apartment but not ready to see Valeria’s face yet. I should call Giovanni—to force him to admit to the things he did and said.
How simple could it be for me to call my father and demand the truth? If lying and scheming weren’t inherent components of his rotted soul?
I don’t need to hear him tell me what I know.
When I chose my bride, I carved a weakness into myself, a vulnerability for Father to exploit. Her family’s sins became my burdens. Her enemies, my enemies.
The puzzle pieces fit perfectly together.
A wife and an enemy.
Love and hate.
What stronger forces could Father use to ensure I’d fall into step? He’s done this often enough. Pit one unsuspecting adversary against another so that he comes out on top.
Valeria, stripped of all defenses, now rests in my apartment. My word given to Don Salvatore that I would allow myself to be sworn into the mob.
Giovanni, out somewhere, stoking discontent among the Russians.
All roads closed off but the gradual, soft slope to hell.