Page 51 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia Don
Nico is a problem and a solution. The cure and the disease. Like medication, he has a hundred disastrous side effects labeled on the bottle of pills that I have to take just to stay alive. Even when his days start being spent in the city, getting back into family business, he makes me take selfies to prove I am being a good girl and keeping busy. No sleeping in or doomscrolling for hours on end.
Whenever I lapse, he will drive straight back to the house and chase me out of the room himself. Sometimes, he says I do it on purpose, just to get his attention. Sometimes, he’s right.
Nico and I haven’t slept together again, but that hasn’t dissuaded him any.
If sleeping with him made me crazy, then not sleeping with me is making him crazy. I feel it between us, the sense that eventually,something will have to give. I rub my thumb against my bare ring finger and tell myself that it’s him. He’s the one who will have to either give me up or give in to my demands and leave Marcel alone. I gave my word, and I will not go back on it.
On a rainy Thursday morning, Nico finds me sleeping on one of the couches in the house. The walls of my room crept in on me all night, one of the little songs Vinny was always humming stuck in my head, and by 3 A.M., I dragged a pillow and a blanket to the sitting room just to sleep somewhere impersonal and a little uncomfortable.
Nico drags me out of the house, but this time, we head into the city’s shopping districts. He gives me his card on the way there, dark and heavier than any credit card I’ve ever felt, the front textured in a way that makes my fingertips bristle.
“Nico, I have money.”
“You have an allowance.Ihave money.”
My mouth opens and closes, unsure if I should be offended when he’s probably right.
“Okay, whatever. What do you want me to spend your money on? Besides the panties that you owe me.”
“A new room,” he says, no smile in his voice. It’s not a suggestion, not a spur-of-the-moment idea. He says it like he’s giving an order. “Whatever you like, you buy it. Everything new, top to bottom. We’ll have it delivered, and I’ll drag out what’s in there now. Hell, you want the whole thing renovated, fuck it, we’ll do that, too.”
My heart pounds.
“Nico, no,” I whisper, on the verge of a panic attack. “My room’s fine, really. It’s not the problem, it was just one night—”
“You think I don’t see the dust on all that shit?” he asks, not looking away from the road. “You don’t have a car, so those are his keys on the nightstand, aren’t they? They never move.”
My throat is too tight to answer.
“There’s a man’s shirt always crumpled up by the dresser. You never touch the mug next to the bed, and it’s never got anything in it.” I want to plug my ears like a child as Nico goes on. “That’s all his stuff, isn’t it? Just fucking rotting there. For God’s sake, girl, have some mercy on him and let the man rest. He has a headstone. He doesn’t need another shrine.”
When I don’t answer in anything more than a sharp sniffle, Nico sighs, bristling.
“I warned you, Ava, I told you I wouldn’t just sit by and donothing.”
“It’s okay,” I whisper, still unable to look at him. “It’s okay. We can…we can change it. But can you…can you be the one to take out...”
“Yes.”
He agrees before I even have to ask.
For the rest of the ride, Nico makes me look through pictures of what I might want my new bedroom to look like. It hurts, like setting a bone, but maybe that’s the only way it can mend.
Nico spends the rest of the day buying furniture to bring my vision to life. I don’t know what kind of agreement Nico has with Sal, or if it’s his own bank account, but he doesn’t mention the price even once. Whatever catches my attention, Nico buys without question. He schedules all of it to be delivered to the house the next day.
By the late afternoon, Nico is in an A-shirt and paint-speckled denim. He tears my old room apart with his bare hands. He drags all the old furniture out himself, not even letting me watch, much less help.
When I am allowed back inside, a fresh shade of Bungalow Breeze glistens on the walls, creamy and warm. The room feels massive with no furniture. Hollow. My heart clenches hard as I look for all those little signs of Vinny and find that each one of them is gone. My pulse beats hard, my throat closing quietly as I try to swallow any urge to cry.
Nico takes a box from the floor and shows it to me.
“I’m putting this up in the closet. Top shelf. If you need it.”
My breath skips. All of Vinny’s things sit neatly arranged inside, and I nearly knock the box out of his hands in my rush to hug him, to throw my arms around him in the dust and chaos.
“Thank you,” I say, those long overdue words from that first night that we reunited.
He just nods, as if this is all just nothing. Routine.
