Page 215 of Made in Love and Blood

Nico moved away from the windows just as a black sedan with tinted windows pulled up in front of the house. He preferred to watch the arrivals so he could gauge if someone intended to pull some shit by their body language, but...it didn’t matter.

That’s what the security team did. Nico would read the mood in-room at the table, on his feet. As a proper underboss should.

Standing just a few inches behind Salvatore, directly at his left, Nico folded his arms at his back to clasp his hands. He resisted the urge to tap his foot or even sway a bit to give his body that outlet of movement to rid his nervous energy. He settled for the constant tap of his thumb and pointer finger inside his other hand, hidden so no one could see.

“There’s another reason,” Nico murmured then, “why I don’t want to sit.”

Salvatore peered up, curiosity sparking. “Do tell. I mean, while we still have the time.”

Nico chuckled. “Well, it’ll mean something, won’t it? When I do finally sit, whenever that is, for whatever reason I do it, it’ll really mean something.”

“Yeah. It’ll mean something,” Salvatore echoed, nodding.

The quiet wait turned out to be the hardest part for Nico, but that didn’t come as a surprise. The quiet seemed to permeate every aspect of his life lately. Long nights. Cold bed. Images on repeat in his head that he couldn’t escape. It took five showers before it felt like his hands no longer had his brother’s blood.

He thought he could still taste vomit. Sometimes. And smell the gunpowder. Sleep troubled him, if he did.

Maybe those things would be made easier if Frankie were there to distract him in all the ways he loved the most, but a part of him knew that wasn’t true. Because those memories, and the way they left him breathless and shaking told a different story. He couldn’t let it go.

“Hey,” came a soft murmur.

Nico thought he could hear footsteps somewhere in the hallway outside the office, so he kept his attention on the door instead of the dark eyes of Salvatore watching him from the chair. “Yeah, boss?”

From the corner of his eye, he saw Sal lift his hand and point to his own temple. “That’s a scary place up there, isn’t it?”

“Lately.”

“I’ll tell you something that it took years for someone to say to me. Don’t sit with it, kid. Don’t walk it alone, either. Don’t spend too much time up there with those things that keep drowning you. Ask someone else to help you swim for a while.”

Nico scoffed softly. “Who? Can’t even call my fucking—”

“Me. Right now, there’s me. Then, there’ll be Larkin. He understands that place, too. And yes, soon you’ll have Frankie.”

The promise of her quieted Nico. His heart, on the other hand...it raged.

“Are you going to attend your cousin’s funeral next week?” Salvatore asked as a pair of footsteps approached the study.

“No. Probably better that I don’t. Why incite something?”

“He was still your cousin. You spent summers with him.”

“He made his choice,” Nico deadpanned.

He meant it.

Salvatore let him have the final word, but only because they had guests. The father and son pair from Maine took in the man at the table and the one at his side first before tracing the rest of the room with studious attention. They wouldn’t find anything. No weapons to make an unspoken threat. No men in black suits, holding guns and wearing balaclavas in the corners like the capos liked to do whenever they had to make a point to their crews.

No, Salvatore stood on something different.

There was strength in silence. A calm confidence. An energy that the man learned and earned. Sure, they would all have a choice today, but the answer shouldn’t be difficult because it sat right in front of their faces. It always had.

Planning for a different outcome? That was just good business.

“I think we’re early,” said the older of the two.

Salvatore simply gestured at the table, unbothered. “Pick a seat; you’re right on time.”

Over the course of the next hour, the remaining made men of the family arrived at the Gallo estate. Each, like the first, were greeted at the front door, escorted to the hallway leading to the study, and then left to make their own decision from there. By the time the table had filled all the empty seats, the silence in the room ticked along with the grandfather clock in the corner. A lot like a bomb.