I keep my hand on his face as I let him talk, and it’s like I’m a teenager again, listening through the door at the sound of Mom crying while Frank and his friends laughed.
“That night,” Nico continues, “she reminded him about my birthday party. He’d been working on a new expansion plan that wasn’t going well, and he didn’t like that she was, in his words…”
He closes his eyes.
“... Reminding him of shit that doesn’t fucking matter.”
He takes one of my hands in his, brings it up to his lips, and kisses it softly on the back.
“He dragged her by her hair down the hall from the dining room, and I rushed after them both because I knew what was about to happen. Vinny tried to stop me, but I wasn’t going to let that monster hurt her that night.”
My fingers tighten in his hand, and he holds onto me like I’m a lifeline in a storm.
“I tried to get between them. Even at that age, I knew that a nine-year-old can’t stop a grown man.” A bitter laugh falls from his lips, and he blinks fiercely in the steam. “I think I just wanted him to hit something that would hit him back."
I know that feeling all too well. All those nights with my mother’s tears soaking through the front of my shirt, and feeling a familiar helplessness at the hurt.
But the difference between me and Nico was that Nico did something.
“He didn’t give me the courtesy of beating me behind a closed door,” he continues. “And he didn’t fucking hold back.”
“You were his son…”
“Not the son he wanted,” Nico says. “That honor goes to Vinny. Maybe he saw an opportunity that night to finally get rid of me. He would’ve killed me if Vinny and his caporegimes didn’t pull him off me.”
He clenches his jaw, and the scar wriggles like a snake.
"Vinny got right up in his face, and told him that he still needed me alive. Said that the Family needed a spare in case something happens to the heir."
His eyes close again.
"Fucking Vinny," he says quietly. "He was right. He just happened to be nine years too early."
I think about the boy in the silver frame on my nightstand, standing in front of a stone-faced woman with his little fist balled at his side and his chin set, daring the world to hurt her.
"You did nothing wrong that night," I tell him.
“I nearly got myself killed."
"I don't care." My hand slides flat against his cheek and turns his face so that he’s looking at me. "You were a child, and you stood to protect your mother because you knew that it was the right thing to do."
He looks at me for a long time, nods, and then looks away. "I meant it when I told you that I'm going to help you and your mother.”
My heart skips a beat.
"I've had a man watching that house ever since you told me about it." His thumb moves over my knuckles. "And if you tell me to, I’ll have them get her out of there and brought here where he'll never reach."
"You can't bring her here." The words leave me before I can soften them.
His thumb stops moving over my knuckles. "Why not?"
I look down at his fingers wrapped around mine, and I think of the small bump under my mother's skin.
"Frank put a tracking chip in her." My voice stays level, even as my stomach turns over on itself. "He always knows where she is. The moment your men move her, he'll be able to track her here."
"He chipped her like a dog?"
"Yes."
