CHAPTER 9
Nicky
I could use some of Dom’s hash right now.
I paced the room like a caged animal. It was almost the case here, locked up in Don Bellomo’s room like that. “That fucking asshole won’t just leave you alone, will he? How did he even escape that over the top loony bin in fucking exile?”
Lina rocked the crying baby gently. “Take it easy, Nicky.”
“Easy?! Leo is much sicker than your husband. He tried to...” I slapped the memory away. One of the worst moments of my life.
“I’m not worried about myself. If Leo is still…fixated on me, I don’t think he’ll hurt me or Nicco, but he’ll hurt Tino. And Tino will let him because he’d rather get hurt than…” Her voice cracked at the end.
“Hey.” I wrapped my arms around her shoulders, placing a kiss on her hair. “It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay.”
“I know you don’t care about Tino or Leo or anyone in the family—”
“I care about no one but you and Nick, and sadly, you two are Bellomos, and that means I have to care about that family, Tino included. He’s my nephew’s father, and as much as I hate to say it, a good one, too. That other son of his, though…”
Nick wouldn’t stop crying even though he was dry and she’d already fed him. “What’s wrong with him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Give him to me.”
She handed me the little sucker. His temperature was normal. I started making silly faces at him, cooing in gibberish. A few seconds later, he stopped crying and his limbs jerked aimlessly as he drooled with a toothless smile. “Ah, someone wants to play.”
Lina laughed under her breath. “You’re so good with him, you know?”
I shrugged. “I’m just the fun aunt. He can sense it.”
“Will I ever get to be the fun aunt?”
“Lina, don’t start. I’m really not in the mood.”
“Don’t you want one of your own?”
I shot a glare at her. Then I shook my head, sighing. “Yeah. Sure. But not before I finish school, find a good job and my skin stop crawling every time I picture a guy touching me only for his face to be replaced by Frank Baldi’s.”
Yeah, that silenced her.
“I’m not like you,Angel.”I wish I were.
“That’s the first time you called me Angel.”
“I don’t think there is much Lina left in you. My little sister is no longer little. She’s made her choices, built her own family, become a powerful Signora, and an adorable mother. She’s the one looking after me now, and she doesn’t need my protection anymore. I might as well call you Angel, too.” Nick started wailing again, and I swooped down on the opportunity. “I’m gonna take him out for a walk.”
“But—”
“Insidethe mansion.”
My eyes caught the ceiling, and I pointed at the new secret opening Tino had installed after the wedding here and in the nursery. It opened to a hidden elevator that went down to a secret tunnel under the pool and led half a mile away from the mansion. An escape plan. As if Tino knew that day would come. “You know how to use that by yourself?”
She nodded. “Tino showed us so many times.”
I didn’t know why he included me in his circle of trust. Nobody knew about the new exit except the three of us and Michele, the only bodyguard he trusted with me and Lina. Perhaps Tino did see me as family after all. “And the remote that opens it is fully charged?”
“Yes, Sis. Just go take your walk. That is if you can get out,” she mumbled.