Wounded Redemption by Brook Wilder
Chapter 21
Rory
“And do you swear that your statements will be true?”
I twisted my hands together as I watched Nico nod his head, wishing that they would let me be at least in the same room. Right now, I was having to watch my husband behind a two-way mirror, but I guess I should be thankful that they let me do that at least.
We were at the police station, with the FBI in both rooms, waiting to hear Nico’s testimony on yet another one of his revelations about his father’s crooked businesses. A week after they had come to visit the first time, they had called again, wanting to know if Nico would be interested in turning over the entire Mafia in exchange for clemency from anything that could be brought against him.
Given Nico’s past, it wasn’t that hard of a decision. While I would have wanted us to walk away, period, and have him not be seen as a traitor by those that trusted him before, we couldn’t run.
There would never be a place that we could run that they wouldn’t come after him, and if we wanted any sort of future with our two children, then this was the best thing to do.
My hand rested on my stomach and I smiled, unable to help it. When I had found out that I was pregnant again, my first thought was fear. I didn’t know why, but I was scared to tell Nico. Having one child was one thing, but another so quickly afterward was going to be quite the adventure.
He had taken it in stride, and since I had told him that day, I found myself lying next to him more than I had been. Sometimes I brought Anthony into the bed while Nico recovered, and we curled up next to each other and watched some sort of cartoon on TV.
Other times, Anthony stayed with Tilda while Nico and I had some alone time.
Not just for sex, mind you. We talked about a future. He wanted to stay in the city, and since everything I had ever known and loved was in the city, I had no objections as long as we were going to be relatively safe from this point forward.
Given Nico’s new alliance with the feds, I hoped this was a bright future we were looking at.
It hadn’t been my decision for him to do this. Nico had asked my opinion, but ultimately I hadn’t been the one to make the call. I had, in fact, told Nico I wouldn’t. I didn’t want him to feel like I was making that determination when he didn’t believe that it would work or that he would resent me for forcing him to do so.
No. Nico had made that decision to spill the beans, and so here we were, starting that process. He had gotten his lawyer to look over the documents, too, making sure that we weren’t getting screwed on the back end, and the lawyer had declared everything was on the up and up.
So, he was going to become a lackey for the FBI.
I couldn’t be prouder. While I knew it was hard for him to break out of the family business in this manner, he wanted this. He had told me just last night that he wanted to start a new life here, to forget that the D’Agostino Mafia ever existed.
Of course, we couldn’t do so until Carmine was captured, but with the bad press the former Mafia don was having, it wasn’t going to be long before they found him.
I couldn’t wait. I couldn’t wait to watch him be put in jail for everything he had done, all the lives he had ruined because he was nothing more than a pure monster.
Monsters didn’t deserve to live.
At least the feds no longer believed that Angelica killed herself. Apparently the forensics hadn’t shown that she could do it easily, not to mention the bullets that had been pulled out of Nico were also the same type that had killed Angelica.
It wasn’t hard to prove that Carmine had been the killer after that.
Nico started his testimony, and I listened with bated breath as he talked about some of his father’s associates, the feds on the other side of the glass taking notes. I had my eyes on my husband, not at all surprised that he could look so cool, calm, and collected.
He wasn’t worried on the outside, but I knew better. I knew he was concerned at what kind of backlash this would cause among the other Mafias and capos that were left. Most had bolted after the article had come out, just dumping their sector and moving on without much notice. The feds were after them, too, hoping to find out just who would sing against Carmine and who wouldn’t.
I imagined that most would do so to save their own asses.
That, and the NYPD was in the process of cleaning up its mess too. I couldn’t remember the exact number of cops that had been arrested, but it was clear that Carmine’s reach had been deep in the police station. Every sector had been touched, or rather cleaned out, and the ones that remained had started to look at other Mafias that might have the same pull.
It was going to take a long time for everything to be set right again, and I knew that it wouldn’t matter what they did or didn’t do. The corruption would always be there. If it wasn’t the Mafia, then it was someone else.
Still, it was nice to know that my article had some good come out of it. Angelica had given her life for those words, and I was happy that in the end, I was able to bring her killer to justice.
Well, I hoped he would be soon.
**
My hope came a few days later in the form of a phone call. Nico and I were sitting on the balcony, enjoying the sun and watching Anthony play in his little gated area that we had put together. Nico’s cell rang and he grabbed it, holding it up to his ear. “Yeah.”
I tapped my fingers to the music, watching Anthony find a ball and throw it happily, giggling as he did so. There was no better sound, really.
“You aren’t going to believe this,” Nico said after a moment, placing his phone on the table.
“What’s that?” I asked, hearing the catch in his voice.
“They found my father.”
After those words came out of his mouth, we rushed to get to the spot, with SWAT and the feds allowing Nico to be there when they toted his father out. Turned out, his father had been hiding in the city all along, choosing a house on the Upper East Side as his hideout. “Are you sure he’s in there?” I asked the fed, John, near me. John was in charge of ensuring we didn’t interfere, though we called him a glorified babysitter.
“Yes,” he replied, a pair of binoculars in his hand. “It was confirmed less than an hour ago.”
I nodded, and Nico squeezed my hand, looking every inch the calm man he had always shown to be. I was a nervous wreck inside, worried that Carmine might take the easy way out and either start shooting or shoot himself.
I wanted him to rot in prison, which was exactly where he would go. There was a part of me that would like to see him dead, but that would be the easy way out. Carmine should be locked up in some small cell in prison, where he would lose every inch of his grandeur and be forced to live among those he might have wronged. I wanted him to look out of the window every day and realize he was never going to be free again, that Nico was still alive, and he hadn’t ruined anything between us.
That was what I wanted for Carmine.
“He’s coming out,” John was saying, motioning for us to step forward from behind the trees we had been spying from.
I swallowed hard as Nico pulled me to the spot with John, and together, we watched his father come out of the brownstone, his hands behind his back. He looked worse for wear, his hair haphazard about his head and his clothing rumpled and wrinkled. After seeing him polished, I was surprised that he would come out like that.
“Fuck me,” Nico muttered as they led him over to a waiting car. “That’s really him.”
“It’s over,” I said, tears perilously close to being released. “He’s done. He’s finished. He’s going to prison.”
Nico turned and wrapped his arms around me, letting out a slow, heavy breath in my hair. “It’s over. We did it. You fucking did it. You got the bastard.”
I wasn’t going to refute that. The feds had told us both numerous times that it had been my article that sparked the interest in getting Carmine in the first place, but also at looking at the corruption within the police department too.
Without it, they would have thought Carmine was untouchable, that he wasn’t worth going after given the way he had gotten out of so many things before.
I had done that.
Pulling back, I watched as they loaded Carmine into the car, Nico’s arm around my waist. It was truly over. We could build a life with our son and this unborn baby, with Leda and Emilia, and even Vincent, who had refused to leave Nico and now was more of a personal bodyguard than the second-in-command. There was no more D’Agostino Mafia now that we had cut off the very head.
**
Two days later, Nico, Leda, and I attended a small funeral for Angelica. Nico had insisted on at least a graveside service, burying her beside her parents. “This would have been what she wanted,” he murmured as we stood and watched them fill in the hole. “To be reunited with her parents again.”
“I know,” I sighed, laying my head on his shoulder. “I just wish that I could have done more for her.” She had given me her deepest, darkest secret, and I hadn’t been able to get her the help she needed in the long run.
“There was nothing you could do,” he said softly, his arm tightening on my waist. “She needed peace, Rory, and this was her only means.”
I didn’t answer, instead watching them push the dirt into the hole. A part of me knew that Nico was right. Angelica had been lost way before I had gotten involved, way before he had found her, but it was sad to think that there had been nothing we were able to do in the end. I hated that Lorenzo would grow up not knowing his mother, or his father really, and one day would run across this information and relive it like he had been involved.
At least he was getting better with his lashing out. Every day I carved out time with him, taking him to the Midtown headquarters as he was fascinated by the printing presses. There he didn’t do anything but watch, and I couldn’t help but wonder if that was how his brain processed things.
He let me put him to bed as well, even allowing me to kiss his forehead without much of a complaint. Sometimes it was hard to leave him, wanting to tell him that he was safe and no one else was going to bother him again.
I just didn’t know what his future held. Nico and I hadn’t discussed Lorenzo or his plans for the future, and soon we were going to have to. We were going to have to figure out if he was part of our family or if he was better off with a foster family.
The thought hurt my heart. This was the last link to Angelica, the last thing she had given this earth even under the worst possible time in her life. I wasn’t ready to throw in the towel just yet.
“Are you ready?” Nico asked. “Remember we have a dinner date tonight.”
“That’s right,” Leda piped up. “I’m watching the boys with Emilia while you two go out.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” I replied, pressing my lips to Nico’s cheek. “How could I when that’s all you have been talking about for days?” The city was starting to slowly open back up after the pandemic crisis had started to wane a little, and when we found out that the restaurants were able to take on actual customers, he had declared that we were overdue for an adult date.
He wasn’t wrong.
“I’m excited,” he whispered, tucking my hair behind my ear and tracing the shell as he did so. “Think I will get lucky on this one?”
I laughed as we walked away from the grave site. “Maybe, though I hope you like a knocked-up version who can’t drink.”
“I will take you any way I can have you,” he said, keeping me close to his side. “And the knocked-up version just means I don’t have to worry about impregnating you.”
“Because you already did,” I drawled.
“Oh yeah,” he grinned. “I did, didn’t I?”
When we climbed in the car, Nico pulled out his cell. “You know Vincent is upset that you don’t trust him to babysit now.”
“It’s not that I don’t trust him,” I said. “It’s the fact that he will probably have our son using a knife before he learns to walk.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Nico winked. “What do you have against knives?”
“Nothing,” I muttered, already picturing Vincent’s grin and Anthony holding a knife in his pudgy hand. “But we should have less reason to have them around any longer.”
“True,” Nico admitted. “Maybe a gun then. I will get Vincent on that instead.”
He was going to be the death of me.
“So,” Nico said after a moment. “This date tonight. You think I will get lucky?”
I shot him a look, my hand resting on my stomach, and his eyes softened. “You know,” he said, putting his cell away and covering my hand with his. “I never thought I would care so much about having a kid before. I mean, you were already pregnant with Anthony, but that time—”
“It was hard,” I cut in, giving him a small smile. “I understand. We weren’t on the best of terms during that entire pregnancy.” I had been obsessed with finding out about what Carmine had to hide, and Nico had been constantly upset, trying to stop me from learning his secret.
“It wasn’t,” he said softly, rubbing my hand with his. “I’m not going to do that to our son, to this baby again. She or he will know that papa loves him or her.”
“Oh, Nico,” I breathed, cupping his cheek with my other hand. “They know. You are an amazing dad.” Even to Lorenzo, he was amazing. Nico was patient and kind, far different from the lifestyle he had grown up in, and there was truly little he could do to make me think otherwise. I mean, I had seen his rough times, but they paled in comparison to what his father had done to him and Leda. “Are you really going to go see him?”
“I need to,” Nico said quietly, some of the hardness coming back into his expression. “I have to close that chapter. It’s time that he faced me without being able to have the upper hand.”
I couldn’t understand, but if he needed to do it, then I was going to support him all the way.
