lives as full as he knew how. He could love his children, and their mother, unreservedly and fill a house with love. He could do, it seemed, everything right.
But he couldn’t take care of them like they deserved. Even his power had limits. No matter how much he wanted their lives to be perfect and safe, he couldn’t do it. All his children bore some kind of damage he couldn’t prevent. And one of them hadn’t been able to survive at all.
If Nick couldn’t manage it, how the fuck could Alex say he could?
The only correct answer he had was the truth. “I want to.”
The don sighed heavily. Then he nodded and put his hand on Alex’s shoulder. “Come. Let’s go in before we freeze solid.”
~oOo~
“You were amazing today,” Alex said as he pulled away from Lia’s soft lips. “So beautiful and strong.”
They stood at the front door, saying goodbye.
She smiled sadly and tucked her head on his shoulder. “Not really. I was shaking so hard, and I thought I’d be sick right in front of everybody.”
“What you said, though … I think everybody needed to hear it.”
“Maybe. I just didn’t want nobody to speak for her.” A sigh left her lips and gusted across his throat. “I’m so scared we’re all going to be broken forever now.”
“You won’t be.” He didn’t have an experience close enough to this grief to know for sure, but it seemed to him people learned to keep going and find a new way to be after any great loss, as long as they had a reason to do it. This family had lots of reasons to heal and keep going.
“I can stay tonight, if you want.” He didn’t have clothes or anything over here anymore, and he was on the clock at the warehouse at six in the morning, but he’d work that out to stay with Lia.
But she leaned back to look up at him and shook her head. “I want to be with you all the time, but I think tonight … I don’t know. It feels like it should be just us. Just Papa and Mamma, and Carrie and Ren and me. Just us tonight.”
“Okay.” He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her. “You are a special girl, Lia Pagano.”
A smile close to real pleasure brightened her face for a moment. “I’m glad you think so.”
“I do. I love you.”
She curled into his embrace and held him hard.
Damn, it felt so good to be this girl’s shelter. With a fire hotter than any he’d ever felt, he wanted to be able to take care of her the way she deserved.
~ 20 ~
Nick sat in his preferred armchair and held the manila folder in both hands like a choir hymnal. He studied the information on the pages therein, printed in the precise, uncannily uniform handwriting of Lara Pagano. Lara herself sat on one of the leather sofas in his home office. She sat prim and silent, looking down at her hands in her lap.
Trey sat beside her. Like Lara, he was dressed casually, in jeans and a wool pullover sweater. Not quite a month after Christmas, he was healing well but wasn’t yet at full speed, and Nick hadn’t put him back to work yet.
They’d brought Frank, their little boy, with them; Beverly was watching him while Nick spoke with his parents. Nick had been relieved to see real pleasure in his wife’s eyes when she’d taken Frank to play. There wasn’t much these days that made her sun shine.
Following his uncle’s example, Nick had worked all his life to keep his business out of his home. A few things had crept into this sacred space over the years, but overall, until he’d been shot, he’d managed to keep his work outside. After he’d been shot, the creep had become a thin stream.
Since they’d lost Elisa, there was no separation at all. His home office had become a second base of operations, so that he could be with his family as much as possible and still manage his business affairs—particularly the conduct of this war, and most particularly his mission for revenge. There would be justice too, but what Nick wanted, what he was ravenous for, was revenge. He wanted more than a righteous answer to this outrage. He wanted to wipe Ettore Cuccia and everyone connected to him off the fucking map.
Christmas Eve had been the inciting event that took the war from an alternating series of financial volleys