"Careful," he goes on, casual as anything, "how much heat you bring down on your new husband here. OCCB's got a whole file open on him already. Be a shame if his loving wife's little family drama gave us cause to look even closer."
"You son of a bitch."
"Language." He smiles. "In front of your mother, no less."
That's when I feel it. Nico, beside me, going from coiled to something past coiled. His hand slides out from my back. I hear the breath he takes, slow and even, and I know exactly what it means: he's about to do something there's no coming back from.
"Say one more thing to her," Nico says, his voice dropping flat and quiet, the same stillness I heard the night he told me what he was going to do to Frank, "and I put you in the bed next to hers."
Frank laughs. Actual laughter, delighted, badge gleaming under the fluorescents as he squares his shoulders. "That a threat, Mr. D'Ambrosio? In a hospital? In front of witnesses? You've got half of Organized Crime Control already building a case against you and you want to hand me the rest of it gift-wrapped?"
"I don't care about your case."
"Nico."
He doesn't hear me. His whole body has gone somewhere past reasoning, past the version of him that calculates risk before he moves. I've watched him hold this exact fury down before, at a dozen smaller moments since the day he became Don. I've never had to be the one holding the door shut on it.
Until now.
I grab his hand.
I lace my fingers through his, hard enough to hurt, holding on with everything I've got. "Don't," I say, quiet, just for him. "Don't give him this. Not here. Not like this."
His face goes rigid. Something raw flickers behind the fury, gone almost before I catch it.
"Lydia." Just my name, rough, a warning and a plea in the same breath.
"I know." My thumb presses into his knuckles. "I know what he did to her. I know what you want to do right now. I want it too. But not in this room, with her lying right there, with a badge on his chest and cops in the building. Please."
Nothing moves for a long moment. His jaw works. The hand in mine is shaking, just slightly, with the effort of not moving.
Then, slow, some of it drains out of him. Not all of it. Just enough.
Frank watches the whole thing happen with open, gleeful amusement, head tilted like he's watching a dog get walked back onto its leash.
"Look at that," he says. "Little wife's got him trained already. Didn't take long, did it? Must be all that practice keeping men in line growing up in my house."
I want to put my fist through his teeth.
"You're smarter than you look, Lyddie," he goes on, dropping his voice, almost gentle now, which is worse than the cruelty. "Smart enough to know there's a version of this where it all gets fixed. Where your mother gets better care than this city hospital's giving her. Where certain files stop getting looked at so hard. All it takes is you being reasonable with me. Like old times."
My skin crawls so hard I feel it in my teeth.
"I want to talk to you," Frank says. "Alone."
"No." Nico's answer comes before Frank even finishes the sentence.
"Family only, Mr. D'Ambrosio." Frank says it almost kindly, savoring every syllable of it, and looks straight at me while he says it, like he already knows exactly which word is going to work.
Nico's hand tightens around mine like he's going to plant his feet and refuse for both of us.
"I've got this," I tell him, and I'm not sure which of us I'm trying to convince.
"Lydia, no. You are not walking anywhere with him alone."
"He's not going to do anything to me in a hospital hallway with your men standing twenty feet away." I make myself say it steady, even though I don't fully believe it, even though some seventeen-year-old part of me is screaming to run the other direction and never look back. "I need to hear what he wants. You know I do."
He looks at me for a long moment, jaw tight, amber eyes burning with everything he isn't allowed to do right now. Then his gaze drops to my hand still locked around his, and something in his jaw eases, just barely. He understands what it cost me to be the one holding him back instead of the other way around.
