15. Nico
NICO
She’s gone.
I throw the bouquet of tulips and carton of cream on the kitchen table and sweep through the apartment like a bloodhound.
In the bedroom, the sheets are rumpled, different from how we’d left them. Lime wafts through the room, the air tacky with humidity. She’s showered.
I check the closet. Her bags are all there, stacked in an orderly column.
I prowl through the place, looking for her. If she’s gone, I’m going to find her, track her down, drag her back, and make her understand this isn’t a fucking—
She’s on the balcony.
I blow out a breath. My hands unclench.
She’s sitting on the bare concrete, her legs sticking out from the corner she’s tucked herself into. The rest of her body pans into view as I creep along the wall.
Her hair is combed back, dripping water onto the back of her sweater. A big black coat drapes over her legs.
She’s watching the horizon, her expression relaxed and a little dreamy.
Slowly, carefully, I creep to the glass door.
I see the moment she becomes aware of my presence. Her shoulders tense. The corner of her mouth dips.
I should walk away and leave her to her space, but instead, I slide open the door.
I sit down next to her, so close that our shoulders brush.
She has two socks on each slender foot. A long, cheap liner sock encased in a fuzzy black one. I want those feet on my lap. I want her draped over me.
On the street below, cars honk and engines roar, but I search for the delicate rhythm of her breathing, and when I find it, everything else fades away.
I’m tempted to tease her. Stoke an incensed reaction from her just to see the fire in her eyes.
But I rein myself back. For the first time since we’ve met, I have the space for patience. For strategy instead of instinct.
And little by little, she relaxes.
Out of the corner of my eye, she turns toward me.
“Nico,” she says slowly. I glance at her. “I’ve been thinking that it might make sense for us to live together, for a while. For safety. Between Stefano and Giovanni, I don’t have any other real options.”
“You don’t.”
She frowns.
I’m not going to dissuade her from thinking she has a way out of this. She doesn’t. She just has me. And I have her.
“This way,” she says suspiciously, like she’s reading my thoughts, “we won’t have to pretend as much in public before the wedding. The Family will think we’re together, and it’ll give me reason to pretend not to know about your affair.”
I don’t give a fuck about the affair or the Family. Valeria knows this, but she needs a little more time to trick herself otherwise.
Now, we have time. She can take as long as she needs.
“There’s something else I have to tell you,” she says, glancing over the road. “When Giovanni saw me at the train station, he said I need to be pregnant before the wedding.”
My body flashes hot, and it’s fucked, because I know Giovanni didn’t present this to her as an option, but it feels like the heavens are parting.
After all the things I’ve said to her in the heat of sex, this feels like a strange alignment of fate.
“He said if I didn’t, it’d be ‘bad for my health.’” She scowls. “Nico, I can’t leave if we have a baby together.”
I can’t fucking hear her say those words. My mind fills with images of her, swollen as she hums a lullaby to her belly, that look of unfiltered joy I saw at the engagement party when she was playing with that little girl. We would make beautiful babies.
And we’ve fucked without condoms already. Maybe she’s already…
I take her hands, and her shoulders tense further. “Are you on birth control?”
Her hands are limp in mine. She meets my eye carefully. “Yes.”
“I want you off.” It’s a matter of safety, right? If Giovanni’s telling her she has to be pregnant before the wedding, if her life is at stake, then that’s what we should do.
She tries to pull her hands away, but I don’t let her. She changes tactics, twisting toward me, and laying her hands flat on my chest.
A lightning strike of arousal bolts down my spine.
“Nico, please,” she says softly. My dick swells. “Please. I’ll pretend to be a good wife, I promise. I won’t fight anymore, just please, please, don’t get me pregnant.”
My altruism flees in the face of my desires. I lean forward and kiss her gently, taste her lips with a brush of my tongue.
Seeing her with that little girl, and then with the fierce, protective love she held for her friend, confirms what I’d hoped.
“You’d make a great mom,” I tell her, and she exhales a shuddering breath. “I’d be a great dad too. I promise you. I would take care of you and the baby, no matter what.”
She struggles against my hold, but not as hard as she could. She wants to fight this so badly, but she wants it just as much.
After a beat, she relaxes and disengages. Releases her emotions, her fight and desire, to become still—and my own emotions surge, desperate to get her back.
I force myself not to push her.
She looks me in the eye. “If we had a baby, would your dad let us raise it in peace? Or would he force a boy to join the Family and a girl marry some man she hates for an alliance?”
The lies lick against the inside of my mouth.
I can see in her eyes—the seed of doubt I could plant if I told her what she wanted to hear. The hooks I could get into her if I just lied.
But an older, wiser part of me cuts through. She’s already agreed to live with me. I don’t have to lie. I just need to be patient.
So it’s not kindness, but the restraint of a hunter that has me telling her, “He’d go to any lengths to get what he wanted.”
And that same primal part of me is pleased by her look of mild surprise at my honesty.
“Then you understand?” she asks. “A good dad wouldn’t bring a child into this life.”
“I do.”
She still seems suspicious, but eases a little, and I let her go. For now.
“And, uh, thank you for breakfast.” She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “It was good.”
“You’re welcome.” I tuck another strand behind her other ear, and she frowns, but doesn’t mention it. “If you’re going to be staying here, we should pick up some extra furniture, right?”
Sitting on the hard concrete, it’s hard to deny that, though I can tell she wants to.
“Yeah, I guess so,” she exhales.
I smile, and she frowns.
An hour later I’m polishing off the rest of the carbonara when she waddles into the kitchen dressed in a thick coat, beanie, chunky black boots, and a full face of makeup.
The desire to peel off every layer of her clothing like a Christmas present until all that’s left is her lipstick sparks through me.
“What is it?” she asks when I’ve been staring too long. She runs her fingers through her hair, frowning.
I smirk. “You look like a big black jelly bean.”
“At least I don’t look like an extra for Sons of Anarchy.” Despite her deadpan expression, her voice carries a teasing lilt.
“I was going for D.A.R.E. reject.”
Her sliver of a smile feels like a sunbeam as she walks to the front door. “Do they still teach D.A.R.E. in New York? We didn’t have it in my high school.”
“If they do, I’m sure my father would’ve paid my school not to. He doesn’t like propaganda unless it serves him.”
I might as well be back in high school as we walk down the hallway to the elevators, Valeria’s fingers just out of reach.
I’ve never wanted to touch someone’s hand as much as I want to touch hers.
In the elevator, a blonde woman steps on from the floor below ours, talking animatedly on the phone.
I take the chance to wrap my arm around Valeria’s stupid, puffy coat, and even though I can barely feel the shape of her figure under the thing, my cock twitches.
She stares straight ahead as I draw her close and murmur in her ear, “There’s a furniture store a block away. Want to walk?”
“Sure.” Her gaze lingers on mine for a single, charged moment before she looks away, pressing her lips into a tight line.
She thinks she’s fighting this, but she’s already making a dozen tiny concessions that are tipping her into my arms. A week ago, would she have allowed herself to spend the day shopping with me?
She’ll see how good I can be for her, and in a few weeks, we’ll pick up the birth control conversation again.
My phone buzzes, and I don’t bother to hide the screen as I check it.
Alessia
Papà gave us the green light. We’re visiting today. We’ll be in Chicago in a couple of hours. Pick out somewhere nice for dinner.
P.S. I mean something nice by my standards, not by yours
P.P.S. At least three stars, obviously, Nico
“Perfect. You can meet my mom and sister tonight.” The elevator doors open, and the other woman steps off. I take Valeria’s hand.
“We should invite Giorgia,” she says.
Who?
Oh, right.
“Maybe next time. They’re coming down to meet you.”
“They know this is fake, right?”
“No, so we’ll need to pretend otherwise,” I say easily. I tighten my fingers around hers as we walk out onto the street. My steps are light, practically floating on the sidewalk. Valeria, forced to play the part of loving fiancée for an evening? Could be worse. “For safety.”
She pulls her hand from mine and shoves it into her pocket. “Right. Well, for safety, you should probably be mean to me at dinner.”
“And why would I do something so counter to my nature?”
She snorts. “So we can plant the seed. Let your mom and sister think we’re off to a rocky start.”
“And how do you propose I be mean? Should I call you names? Pull your hair?” Despite the frigid breeze slicing across the sidewalk, I’m heating up.
“Actually, I’m starting to come around. Maybe I take away your chair, so you have to sit on my lap.
And your fork, so I have to feed you. That would be very mean. ”
“Maybe you could ignore me the whole night,” she says dryly. “And every time I speak, you start talking about something completely different.”
We walk up to an intersection and wait at the corner. The pedestrian alarm beeps for us to cross, but a white Kia hooks a hard right—I jerk Valeria against my side and flip off the driver as they speed off.