24. Nico
NICO
Tripp gnashes his teeth as he considers my offer. He squints at me, pupils overblown. “Twenty thousand is kinda high, right?”
“Blew through your trust fund already?”
“No, it’s just the last guy—”
“The last guy isn’t here. I’m here, and I’m telling you it’s twenty.”
Tripp is high off of something—probably the coke I’m selling him—and I can see the fuck it moment in his eyes when he remembers money doesn’t matter half as much as keeping his high going. We make the exchange, I text Salvatore to let him know it’s done and drive to my next job.
I haven’t gotten many details on this one, only that I’ll be guarding a storefront.
In the past, when I gave a shit about all of this, I never would’ve entered a job with so little information.
But all I care about is getting through my tasks so I can go home and kiss Valeria until her lips curve into a wry smile.
She hasn’t been the same since I got hurt.
When she’s with me, she’s happy. She pulls me into the bedroom every chance she gets, shows me new recipes she wants me to cook, relaxes in my arms after a jump scare from one of her movies—and even with my fucked-up ribs and aching body, I hold her close.
But she barely talks to Lacey anymore, and she sleeps constantly.
And she’s been making those fucking collages of hers.
She hides them now, tucks them into a binder she keeps on the kitchen table, but every day this week I’ve flipped through them while she sleeps.
They all show a man dying. Flowers in his hand, blood spraying from his chest. Missing an eye, missing his face, missing his hand. Dark colors, reds and blacks mostly. Yesterday’s was a woman dressed in all black with a delicate spiderweb over her face like the veil of a widow.
She’s scared, I know. The one thing she wants is to be safe, and that illusion went up in flames alongside her family home and kicked in the ribs for good measure.
But I’m going to fix that. I have to.
I’ll keep my nose to the grindstone, do as I’m told, and get back to her as soon as I can each day.
And if Father doesn’t answer my goddamn calls, I’ll fly up to see him and demand that he agree to keep Valeria safe.
Alessia tells me she’s working on Father, but I know better than to expect anything to come of that.
I disappointed him when I refused to kill Aceto, and now I need to do something big to stay in his good graces, or he’ll grind me underfoot until I do.
I pull the SUV, Salvatore’s “gift” to me, in front of a chapel. I reach for my phone to double check the address but freeze when I spot a man dressed in a long black coat, hidden in the building’s shadows.
Speak of the devil.
I park across the street and walk toward Salvatore, stuffing my hands into my pockets and bowing to shield myself against the bitter mist spraying my face.
Pockets of grey slush line the streets, reflecting the bleak sky above.
No wonder Valeria’s been so listless. She deserves sunshine and balmy weather, not this depressing shit.
As soon as I approach, Salvatore strides down the sidewalk, demanding without words that I follow him.
There’s no pride to swallow as I trail behind. Power plays only work if you have an ego to protect, and I’d get on all fours and bark like a dog if it meant I could get back to Valeria sooner.
The cold gnaws at my exposed skin and worms through my fractured rib as we walk in silence until, eventually, he talks.
“We have the details of the drive-by.”
We pass an auto repair shop where some poor bastard huddles outside, failing to light a cigarette as a cold gust of wind whips away the flame.
I can’t remember the last time I’ve smoked a cigarette. Guess I swapped out one addiction for another, this one with red lips and a scowl.
“And?”
“Giovanni contracted those men. The pakhan claims he has no involvement in this, but we have videos of Giovanni and him meeting in secret.”
“Giovanni’s trying to start a war?” Giovanni—and by extension, my father—might have plotted the drive-by to scare me, but the Russians shooting at the New York don’s children and wife carries broader consequences.
“Potentially.” We walk down the sidewalk a while longer until Salvatore adds, “They could be scheming for an additional outcome.”
“Like what?”
“Ottavio”—Salvatore says our father’s name like he’s tasting poison—“has expressed his frustrations that you have not been fully participating in the Family business. He might feel that an enemy would be better motivation for you than a wife.”
I nearly stop in my tracks, only forcing myself to stumble forward to stay alongside Salvatore. “What are you saying?”
“If you loved her and a group of Russians killed her, what would you do?”
Rain hits my face like the spray of blood.
I’d kill them all.
I don’t need to say it—Salvatore knows. As much as we hate to admit it, we’re cut from the same cloth in that way.
“That doesn’t make any sense. If Father wanted her to be dead, she’d be dead.” Fear lances through my chest, puncturing my lungs and heart with a single blow. How many opportunities has Giovanni had? Stefano?
I thought—I assumed—that Father understood losing Valeria would be the final nail in the coffin to our relationship.
That if I lost her, he’d lose me, but what have I always been to him if not a disappointment?
He wouldn’t care if I rejected him. Maybe he’d kill me too and finally rid himself of his embarrassment of a son.
“What’s more motivating than the loss of a wife?” Salvatore’s tone is almost gentle.
It dawns on me.
It’s exactly what he’s been pushing and threatening Valeria to do. He wants her pregnant.
“Losing a wife… and a child,” I say. My vision narrows. Blood pounds in my ears. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Even Father isn’t that deranged.”
“He’s dying,” Salvatore says dryly. “He’ll do what needs to be done if it ensures you’re properly motivated to preserve his legacy. He’s lost a wife and a son. It could be that he believes you need the same.”
Salvatore’s mother and little brother, Matteo.
I’d never met either, but Father spoke of them when he was drunk. He said he hated Salvatore’s mother for leaving. He branded her, Matteo, and Salvatore as traitors. And he toasted to her and Matteo’s deaths more than a decade ago.
But he keeps a picture tucked into the Bible in his office library—a worn photo of Salvatore’s mother holding baby Matteo while a boy Salvatore stood solemnly at her side. Her face was faded, like a finger had been passed over it hundreds of times.
Hate and love—and a hunger for both passed down in the blood like a disease.
I swallow. My feet pull me forward like a rusty automaton, the buildings around us fading away into nothing. That word again. Legacy. Mamma said the same thing.
“You’re his son, too. Why can’t you be his legacy?”
“We both are,” he says simply.
I stop. Salvatore faces me.
Two brothers. Two empires.
That’s what Father wants. My rightful place as don in New York with Don Salvatore in Chicago. Strength and prosperity, and death to all who oppose the Matassa name.
Certainty settles into my bones, clarity in my veins as I finally understand Father’s game.
His legacy, purchased for an inconsequential cost—the life of an outcast woman and her unborn child—for a lifetime of his aimless son’s directed fury. And if I focus that rage at him after I murder the Russians? It’s the gamble of a dying old man.
I can’t get Valeria pregnant.
I unfold in the freezing rain, letting it sweep over me like a forced baptism. I can’t keep her. I can’t exist within the Family and keep her safe. It’s a paradox. She was right—about everything.
I finally understand.
“I want to take Valeria away somewhere,” I say. My throat is raw like I’ve swallowed broken glass. “A honeymoon.”
Salvatore’s eyes—amber like mine, like our Father’s—gleam with interest. “And after?”
“She doesn’t belong in our world. She’s too good.”
“I’ll give you a week.”
Valeria’s in the bathroom when I get home. I pace in the kitchen, ribs stabbing into my side, a restless energy coursing through me.
My present sits next to a bouquet of tulips on the kitchen table.
I exhale deeply and wince at the hot poker of pain in my side.
I want her to like it. I want her to love it.
“Nico.” She freezes in the bedroom doorway. “You’re home early.”
Dark circles line her eyes. Her hair is pinned from her face with sprinkles of black pins. She’s wearing the same black hoodie and sweatpants as yesterday. She wipes at her mouth self-consciously like she’s just finished brushing her teeth.
“I should’ve called.” I say. Every inhale hurts.
“It’s okay. I just woke up anyway.” She walks past the bouquet and straight to me, surprising me with a gentle embrace. As her arms circle my waist and her body melts into mine, I drop my face to her neck and inhale deeply, wishing I could paint the inside of my lungs with her scent.
I wish I could bottle up every part of what makes her special and hoard it inside me for the rest of my life.
“I have a present for you,” I murmur.
“The flowers? They’re nice,” she says against my chest.
“There’s something underneath them.”
Valeria turns in my arms and spots the two strips of paper on top of the kitchen table.
She walks over to them and picks one up, her eyes growing wide when she sees what’s printed on it. “A trip to Hawaii? It says the flight is for tomorrow.” She turns toward me. “How can you manage this? Aren’t you working for Don Salvatore?”
“He said I’m useless with a broken rib,” I lie, “and after the drive-by, it would be good to get out of the city for a little bit. It’s only for a week, but I thought we could celebrate a sort of early honeymoon. Do you want to go?”
She smiles, soft and sincere. Gorgeous. “I’d love that.”