Nick smiled for her, then tipped Carina’s head up. “Come come, cara. Let’s go upstairs. We need to rest. Times will be hard for a while now.”
Carina nodded and let her head droop back to his chest. As he led her from the kitchen, he caught Alex’s eye. “Lia’s room is the first door on the left.”
The boy frowned sharply. “Don?”
The concession he was about to make went against every fatherly instinct he had, but another instinct said it was the right thing to do. Lia was an adult now. He needed to let her be the woman she wanted to be. And now he’d learned that keeping her home and keeping her safe were not synonymous. Maybe he couldn’t keep her safe at all.
“Knock. If she wants you there, you can stay—but give her what she needs. Don’t take. Give.”
Alex blinked as if Nick had spoken in a language he didn’t know. Nick walked past him to the stairs, leading Carina to bed. They were about halfway up when he heard Alex step onto the bottom step.
~oOo~
After he got Carina settled—she was sixteen but let him put her to bed like he used to when she was small—he checked on Ren, who was curled into a ball under his covers, nothing but his dark hair showing.
He could hear Lia and Alex talking softly, so he let them be.
Elisa’s door was closed. Nick stood before it for a long time, wanting to go in and afraid as well. But he could not build a fortress of grief. If he let himself sink into this loss, he would lose everything else. He had to be strong. He had to win.
Winning the war would not ease losing Elisa. But losing the war would deepen the loss of her until it hollowed him out and took the rest of his family as well.
So Nick didn’t go into Elisa’s room. He went to the master bedroom instead. He went to his wife.
She slept a deep, silent, medicated sleep, but it wasn’t peaceful. The ravages of grief showed on her face, and Nick’s chest tightened into a knot at the sight of her swollen eyes, her drawn mouth.
At the hospital, he’d been afraid to face her blame—so afraid, in fact, that he’d run. Maybe he wouldn’t have gone back, if not for Lia.
Seeing Lia in that place, the pain and fatigue in her eyes, the horror when she’d touched Elisa’s shoulder and known the truth as a concrete fact, had split him open, but he’d seen as well the truth that he was vital to his family. He couldn’t abandon them. He was not a man who ran. He was not a man who feared. And he most certainly was not a man who abandoned his family in their need.
When he’d gone to Beverly, there had been no blame in her. Only need. Their daughter had been killed in violence he brought to their family, but she didn’t blame him.
She’d needed him. They all did.
So he would not let them down.
Fuck, he was tired.
Before he joined his wife in bed, he went to take a scalding hot shower and wash off the evils of the night. The steam eased the ache in his chest and softened joints and muscles that rage had calcified.
When he was dry again and dressed in silk pajama bottoms, he slipped between the sheets and got close to Beverly. He kissed her shoulder.
His name rose up from her mouth, a desperate plea carried on a breath.
“I’m here, bella, I’m here.”
She rolled to him, still mostly asleep, in that unsettling medicated twilight, and said, “She’s dead.”
“I know, Beverly. I’m so sorry.” To his wife, he could say those words. He’d said them to Elisa as well, but too late.
Weeping overcame her, and Nick pulled the love of his life to his chest and held her. Tears began to form and swell inside him, and he didn’t hold them back. Here, in the heart of his home, with his sun in his arms, he would let his grief hold sway.
In the morning, however, he would turn his mind to winning the war that had made this grief.
~oOo~
That afternoon—it was still Christmas Day—Nick left his wife and the three children to the care of friends and guards, while he and Donnie went back to the hospital to check in on their wounded and meet with Angie and Bruno, the Sacco underboss.
Now, the surgery waiting room was no longer their base. Giada