“He said to stay here,” Erica says, fear in her voice.
“He’s out there, injured,” Vito says, impatience pumping off him, “and we’re sitting in here, waiting. For what? And what happens if he doesn’t make it?”
Now it’s my turn to flinch.
“Sorry, Cat,” he spits out, “but it’s true. Then what? Then we’re sitting ducks in here, waiting for someone to come take us all out. No. No fucking way.”
“Vito,” Teresa says calmly.
“Look,” he says, “if you think I’m just going to stay here, then you don’t know me as well as you think you do, all right? Something went wrong in that big psychologist brain up there, babe, becau—”
“Vito,” she says again, drowning him out.
He shuts up, braced, angry. She wraps her arms around him and kisses him, long enough for the girls to say “yuck!”
Teresa pulls back with a smile. “I know. I’m actually surprised it took this long.”
Vito stares at her, breathing hard. “Then why are you stopping me?”
“I’m not stopping you,” she says softly. “I’m reminding you what you have to come back to.”
His face changes, and he presses his forehead to hers.
A rare moment of public softness from Vito.
Nico turns to Erica, and for a second, the hard, furious line of him falters.
Erica is still seated with Emma clutched against her, one hand curved protectively around her belly. Her eyes are bright with fear, but she does not ask him to stay. I can see that it costs her. I can see the words sitting behind her teeth.
Please don’t go.
Instead, she holds Emma tighter and says, “You come back too.”
Nico crosses to her in two strides, crouches in front of her, and cups the back of her head with one hand. He kisses her hard and fast, then presses his mouth to Emma’s dark hair.
“I will,” he says.
Erica catches his wrist before he can stand. “Nico.”
He looks at her.
Her voice shakes. “You better.”
Something almost like a smile cuts through his anger, brief and sharp. “Yes, ma’am.”
Nick is already standing near Lucia with one of the pistols from the case in his hand, his body positioned between his wife, his children, and the door. He looks calm but ready.
Vito pulls his personal weapon from beneath his jacket and holds it out to me.
I stare at it for one beat too long.
“Take it,” he says.
I know how to shoot, but being given a gun by Vito is something I never expected to happen.
I take it.
The weight is cold and familiar in my hand.
