Page 38 of Made in Love and Blood

“This is—”

“Nico asked me for something, and I want you to know so you can prepare. He wants to be a made man, and if any of us is going to make it from the ground up and earn his button, it’ll be that fucking kid, Giorgio. He doesn’t have chips on his shoulders; you’ve taken whole chunks. He’s got something to prove every day that he chooses to keep living. If you think the mess today with Marco is bad, imagine what he’ll do when Nico starts making real waves. Because he will.”

“I didn’t give you my son to start a fucking war.”

Salvatore laughed, but it sounded like it hurt. “Are you joking? You started that war the day you brought Nico home, killed the woman he should have called mother, and made Marco hate him for it. You did that, Giorgio. I was there. And every time he hurt that boy, humiliated him and abused him, you looked away, excused it, and now he feels like it’s his right. That’ll be a hard lesson to unlearn him, and I don’t mind being the one who does it.”

“Is that another threat?”

“I’ll let you take it however you want.”

Giorgio answered with a grunt, and then the loud jangle of keys hitting the floor followed the squeak of footsteps moving away. A quiet exchange happened at the door, and the nurse asked her father a couple of questions which resulted in her pulling the door closed when they ended the conversation.

She still didn’t move. A minute passed. Two. She counted the seconds.

At three, Salvatore muttered a low fuck, and she felt his hand swiping for her. “Come here, Sunshine. Come here right now.”

Frankie never saw her father cry, but the wetness on his cheek met hers when she clamoured into his waiting arms. There wasn’t nearly enough room on the bed for the two of them, but somehow, he made it work. He squeezed harder as kisses found her hairline.

“These people are not safe,” he told her.

“You’re one of these people, too.”

One didn’t exist without the other.

She understood that now; she knew too much.

He didn’t give her a chance to reply before pulling her in for another bar-like hug to hide her from the world. She recognized the gilded cage made of her life finally. Even if the prison wasn’t his intention, and she didn’t know what to do with the big, wide world outside of it. It didn’t matter.

That prison felt a hell of a lot safer than anything else currently.

Crazy how that worked.

6. — the only one on time...

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Staten Island, New York

Nico, Gallo Estate

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Frankie had pink kitten ear headphones on and danced a circle next to the opened driver’s door of a rose-gold Supra. Nico cut the engine on his Ducati, walking the black bike closer to the girl whose golden-brown hair made her look like a fairy fluttering back and forth. Without the noise of his bike, he could make out the unmistakeable beat of a popular song. It took him back to raves and molly, sex on drugs, and a handful of years in his life when he thought he was happy.

Hiding, more like it.

He blinked the memories away at the same time he put the kickstand down on his bike and pulled the helmet from his head. Frankie still hadn’t noticed him watching her while his black hair fell in thick strands around his field of vision.

He could almost sing the song in his head while her chin bobbed along to the loud music pumping out of her headphones. Nico even found himself instinctively rocking his upper body back and forth along with the beat and the roll of her delicate shoulders covered in baggy blue cashmere.

Placing the helmet in front of him where his hands could rest on top, he made himself stop dancing. He might even get a laugh when she finally realized he waited there.

“Kiss me, kiss me,” she sang, spinning on the spot.

Nico smirked and waved two fingers.

“Shit!”