“Then let’s eat.”
Thirty-Two
Nico
* * *
The next few weeks are some of the happiest of my life. I don’t hear a thing from Giovanni. I guess he’s decided the fastest way to win this thing is to get Santina pregnant. I guess wrong.
Twenty-one days after conception is the soonest the pregnancy tests are likely to be accurate. I get her to take one every day and I try not to be disappointed when they keep coming back negative. One day eighteen, she swears she can see a faint line in the right place but I’m not so sure.
The days we spend together are blissful. Whenever I’m not working, I’m with her. I find out a lot about her, things even my private eye didn’t manage to discover. She’s into Red Dwarf, The Inbetweeners and a load of other British TV shows. She’s also a mean player of GTA 5 and she curses loudly whenever a mission doesn’t go her way.
She wants to learn to cook and in the last couple of days I’ve managed to get out of her that maybe she’d like to pursue that at college. She’s also looking at child psychology for a career when this is all over.
I get the feeling she’s never had anyone listen to her before. At first, she didn’t want to share much about herself. She acted like she had no dreams, no ambitions, no plans for the future. Little by little they’ve been coming out though. I guess she just needed the right encouragement.
Not going to lie, I’m falling for her, big time. It’s not just the dimples she gets when she smiles, the way she throws her head back and doesn’t give a shit what she looks like when she laughs at something. It’s not even how confident she’s getting in bed.
It’s all of those things but together they combine to make something very special. A unique personality. All the things about her add up to something that is making it hard to imagine the idea of spending my life without her.
I’m glad we’re married. That gives me the perfect excuse not to let her go. Not that she’s showing any signs of wanting to leave. She snuggles into me when we watch her TV shows like we’ve been married for years.
In bed, I sit wrapped around her and she leans back against me. Some nights we fall asleep like that, her sighing happily as she drifts off. Other times, she starts to grind her hips against me, knowing what it’ll do to me. It helps that we sleep naked. She makes her intentions very clear.
I keep putting my hand on her stomach every chance I get. I can’t help it. I’m certain she’s pregnant. I just need proof. Once I have that, I can go to the commission and Giovanni loses.
Santina hasn’t been in touch. I know she’ll be on birth control for as long as it takes. I just need to make sure my brother doesn’t find out. I don’t know if I’ll be able to protect her as well as Rory and Cara if he does.
Tomorrow is day twenty-one since we fucked in the diner. I can’t wait for the morning. It’ll be the true test of whether this worked.
I fucked her a couple more times over the following days but I’m sure it was that time. Seeing her laid open for me on the table like she was my birthday treat, it did things to me. I don’t think I ever came so hard in my life as I did that day.
I’m thinking of that when we settle down to sleep. How good it was with her. I know she’s pregnant. I just need proof.
I think that’s why it all goes wrong. Either I’m so busy thinking of tomorrow’s test that I forget or I’ve gotten complacent since she came along. Domestic life and keeping alert don’t seem so compatible anymore. I’m letting things slip. I don’t check the cameras as often. I don’t check the locks or the alarms.
I think that’s why it happens. I get lazy. All because I’m fixated on her. She’s been odd all day though she said she was fine. I guessed she was worried about the pregnancy test. I was wrong.
We sleep together but when I wake up she’s not there. Instead, there’s a note she’s left on the table next to the bed. “Don’t come looking for me.”
I’ve barely picked up the note when my phone rings. “Nico,” Giovanni says down the line, sounding very pleased with himself. “I always win.”
“What are you talking about?” I snap back, reading the note through again, flipping it over to see if there’s anything on the back. There isn’t.
“You thought I’d quietly gone into the night? You don’t know me at all.”
“Get to the point, Giovanni.”
“I’ve been one step ahead of you this entire time. I gave you a chance to back down but you had to keep beating your chest like you stood a chance against me.”
Something dawns in me. “Where’s Rory?”
“Don’t worry. She’s perfectly safe. I just made her a better offer. That’s all.”
“Where is she?”
“She was most upset when I told her that you killed her dogs. She was under the impression I did it.”