Total pages in book: 157
Estimated words: 154525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 773(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 773(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
Matty passed Salvatore a look as he turned to leave. Salvatore simply brushed the underside of his jaw with two fingers and put his attention back on the problem at hand. That being Giorgio.
“You tried to get a pregnancy past me?” Giorgio gritted out.
“The pregnancy is a secondary detail that you would’ve eventually learned. I wanted to ease you into it. Trust me, it pissed me off, too.”
“Goes to show what you had to say about him earlier isn’t entirely true, is it?”
Is that what he thought? “No, I didn’t speak a single lie about Nico. Nor Marco.”
At his name, Marco sneered. “What’d you have to say about me, Sal?”
“To you, young man, you will address me using my proper name, or you won’t address me at all.”
“I—”
“I would suggest you go with the nothing at all choice, Marco,” Salvatore warned, “lest I finally give you what I’ve been promising for months.”
“Don’t threaten my son,” Giorgio uttered.
A grin tugged at Salvatore’s lips, but he just shook his head. Sucking his tongue against his top front teeth, he folded his arms and waited out Nico’s eventual arrival. It took a few more minutes, and they each passed painfully slow. The longer it took, the angrier Giorgio became until the man was practically apoplectic.
By the time Nico strolled into the office, Giorgio’s face had turned entirely red. He wasted no time before exploding.
Just like the crystal bowl on the desk that he threw at Nico the moment he saw his face. Nico ducked in time, thankfully. The bowl shattered against the doorframe.
“You little shit!” Giorgio roared.
Nico glanced at Salvatore, but otherwise, stayed steady. “It’s a boy, Dad, and we’re naming him Damiano. We picked that today. I love her. I love her more than air. More than myself. I love her.”
“Aw, so cute,” Marco teased from the corner. “Less fuckable now that she’s pregnant, but...”
Nico didn’t even glance his way, still staring at his father. “I know I fucked up, but I don’t see it like that, anymore. It happened, and I’m doing what I should do; what I want to do.”
“Fucked up?” Giorgio snarled, reaching for the next thing on his desk to throw. A paperweight, by the looks of it. “I understand marrying the bitch because you knocked her up—but hiding it? That smells like something bad to me, and I want to find out where the smell is coming from before it spreads.”
That paperweight lifted in his hand.
Salvatore took three steps sideways, stopping in front of Nico. “You’re not going to throw something at him again. You’re not going to hit him. You’re not going to call him names, or yell, or anything else, Giorgio. You talk to him like the man he is, with respect, or this ends now.”
The boss’s expression lit with disbelief. “Who do you think you’re talking to? I made you, Sal! I tell you what to do, not the other way around! You’re this close to never leaving this office, you fucking moron!”
“I know exactly who I’m talking to,” Salvatore replied.
Marco decided to taunt his brother yet again, dragging the older men away from their conversation entirely. “So, you couldn’t get her to abort it, or what?”
Nico remained still and quiet. Unbothered.
Marco’s gaze tracked his brother like prey. “You know, she’s not going to look like that after she shits out a few of your brats, bro.”
“Marco, shut up,” Giorgio snapped at him.
He didn’t. “Shit, maybe I can still hit it before you get another one up in there, huh? She won’t be entirely ruined, anyhow.”
“Get out!” Giorgio bellowed.
All eyes turned on the man behind the desk.
“Get out,” he repeated to Marco through clenched teeth, “and take your brother with you so I can have a fucking conversation without you running your mouth like you always do, Marco.”
Marco just smirked, chuckling slightly. “Whatever you say, Dad. Come on, Little Nicky,” he added, pushing off the wall to nod at the door. Nico barely passed him a glance, but he did meet Salvatore’s gaze over his shoulder. “Seems you have interesting things to share. Rate her out of ten—for a lay, I mean.”
Salvatore had to breathe deeply once, then twice, at that comment. It took a lot. He had years of practice keeping his cool, but Marco tested the man with every word that came out of his mouth.
Nico did not have such practice and patience. Yet, somehow, he turned to follow his brother, silent still.
Then, Marco stopped in the doorway, looking back at Nico. “You know, I just had a thought.”
Giorgio, distracted momentarily with picking up the phone on the desk to make a call, didn’t notice the exchange.
Marco didn’t wait for Nico to ask what thought he could possibly have before moving right along to share it with the rest of the class. “Maybe I won’t need to put much work in to fuck her after all. Depending on how this goes for you, I might be her last option left.”