Antony (13 page)

He always had liked a little bloodshed.

“You spiteful fucking bitch,” he growled into the receiver. “Cecelia doesn’t know how to complain, Kate, and she doesn’t even call you anymore because all you know how to do is bitch about how unfair your poor little life is. Go to hell,
cagna
. And stay the fuck away from my home or I won’t hesitate to put you down like the bitch you are.”

Chapter Fourteen

Antony slammed the phone down before turning his back to the room.

“Antony—”

“I need to go home,” Antony said, cutting off whatever John was about to say. “Cecelia doesn’t call Kate unless she absolutely has to.”

“She said Cecelia called sometime this morning after I left. She was okay this morning, Antony. If she called, she was okay.”

Antony checked his watch, his heart sinking. “I have to go home, now.”

Not even caring that he hadn’t properly said goodbye to his boss and that he probably needed to make a quick check on his guys, Antony practically jogged out of the restaurant. He’d parked a little way down the road because all the other spots closer to the joint had been taken by other Capos and diners.

“Skip!”

Antony ignored the call as he came up to his Benz and slipped the key in the door to unlock the damn vehicle. His hands were shaking, which only caused him to drop the fucking keys in a puddle of slush. He bent down to pick them up just as fast, ignoring how it froze his fingers numb just to do so.

“
Skip, wait
!”

Finally registering he knew who that voice was, Antony turned, seeing Giovanni coming down the sideway in a fast run.

“There’s nowhere to fucking park around here.”

Antony stared at the kid, unsure and perturbed. Not because he was there or that he’d found him, but because there was a horrid dark stain across Giovanni’s blue shirt. It had darkened to a ruddy brown, but without a doubt, Antony knew what that stain was. God knew he wore enough of them himself over the years.

Blood.

“Gio—”

“I’m sorry I didn’t get here quicker, but I had to wait for the—”

“Giovanni, where is my wife?” Antony asked, his voice weaker than he’d ever heard before.

“Skip …”

“Where is she?”

“She’s okay,” Giovanni said quickly. “Or she was when I left her.”

“
Left her
?” Antony roared.

“I had to wait for the ambulance! She’s okay, now. She was passed out when I got there. I kicked in your door, by the way. You probably need to get that fixed, but she’s okay.”

Antony’s heart found his throat. It lodged there like a stopper, taking away his ability to breathe. “Christ.”

“She’s okay,” the kid repeated. “But she lost a lot of blood.”

Antony felt like his entire body just floated away for a second. He heard the kid rattle off which hospital Cecelia was at and that Liliana had arrived shortly before the ambulance to take Dante. Cecelia must have tried to call out, or she did, because the phone was off the hook and sounding a dial tone, Giovanni explained.

Antony’s heartache only grew the longer the kid talked.

“I can’t drive,” Antony said, sure of that fact.

“What?”

Antony slammed his keys into the kid’s palm. “Drive my Benz. Take me to the hospital. I can’t.”

Giovanni didn’t ask why. It was pretty damn obvious. Antony’s hands were shaking so badly he could barely hold the keys.

“Take me to my wife.”

The kid nodded. “Sure, Skip.”

• • •

Cecelia blinked awake in the hospital bed, mumbling something Antony couldn’t understand. His wife was paler than he’d ever seen her look and he knew the blankets wrapped tight around her frame hid the bandages he was too terrified to ask the nurses about.

His whole day was stained with the taste of fear.

“Hey,
Tesoro
,” Antony whispered as Cecelia’s confused gaze landed on him.

Instantly, Cecelia began to cry.

Not even considering it might hurt her to do so, Antony crossed the bit of space between him and his wife, slipping into her bed to hold her tight. Cecelia grimaced, pain clouding her features, but she didn’t ask him to move.

“Ow, that hurts,” she sobbed.

“Sorry, sorry.”

“Don’t leave.”

“I won’t,” he promised.

“I tried to call.”

“I tried to get out of … shit, but I couldn’t.”

“It’s okay,” she mumbled.

It really wasn’t.

Cosa Nostra had cost him a lot today. Missing the birth of his second child, for one. Nearly losing his wife for two.

“The baby is doing okay,” Antony said, wanting Cecelia to know that before anything else. “He’s in the nursery with the ten other newborns and he’s got the loudest lungs of them all. Apparently, he’s got an attitude already. We’re in for some trouble with that one.”

“He?”

“Another boy.”

Cecelia laughed weakly. “God isn’t going to give me girls, Antony.”

Well, He wouldn’t be giving them any more children, now.

“Is he beautiful?” she asked quietly.

“He looks like Dante did, but a little more like you,” Antony said, kissing his wife’s tear-stained cheek. “More hair, too.”

“Explains the heartburn.” Cecelia sniffled, hiding her face against Antony’s chest as she said, “It just … started coming. There was red all over. And pain, a lot of pain.”

Antony chewed on his inner cheek, wondering how he should tell his wife what the doctors had explained to him earlier while she was still under from the anesthetic. He figured blunt honesty was best because that’s what he did—who he was. Cecelia always appreciated and liked that the most from him.

“There was a rupture where the placenta was attached and it tore the lining of your uterus. That’s why the bleeding started and why it put you into labor.”

Cecelia sucked in a hard breath. “What aren’t you saying?”

“They had to take it all,
Tesoro
.”

“All?”

She didn’t seem to understand.

Antony’s heart broke a little more.

“Your reproductive organs. They made the choice to take your uterus because of the severity of the tear and—”

“Stop,” Cecelia said, her voice muffled into his shirt.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Antony replied.

“I wanted more.”

“I know.”

“We didn’t—”

“They’re perfect,” Antony interrupted gently.

He wrapped his arms around his wife and held her shaking, crying frame closer.

“They’re so perfect, Cecelia. Two healthy boys. You’ll spoil and love them right to death, no matter what. You already do.
Mamma’s
boys, right?”

Cecelia nodded. “How’s Dante?”

“With your mother right now.”

“She’s not a very good babysitter. She drinks too much wine.”

Antony agreed. “Paulie and his wife will go pick him up later and take him until I get home.”

“Will you get the baby for me?”

“They want you to rest first.”

“No, I want him with me, not in the goddamn nursery being watched by nurses.”

Antony laughed. “All right, I’ll go get you your little Marcello
principe
.”

• • •

Antony watched as his wife fell instantly in love with her youngest son. The paleness in her cheeks lightened with a pink tone as she smiled, her eyes lit up, and she cradled the swaddled baby boy to her chest.

“Hello,
mio bambino
,” Cecelia whispered, tracing her fingers over the sleeping boy’s features. “Look at him, Antony.”

“I have. For hours.”

Antony knew every single inch of his baby’s face without even needing to look. He knew the child’s nose matched his mother’s, but he had Antony’s dark hair and the shape of his father’s lips. He knew the boy’s lip quirked up at the side in his sleep and he seemed to like sucking on the side of his hand.

Cecelia glanced up. “Oh?”

“You were out for a while and I didn’t have anything else better to do.”

“Huh. Has anyone come?”

“Everyone has came and seen him. I sent them all home. You need to rest,
Tesoro
.”

Cecelia hugged the baby tighter. “Not yet.”

“You’re going to spoil him, Cecelia.”

“So?”

Antony just laughed. “Spoil him all you want.”

“I plan on it.”

Cecelia moved over on her bed, making room. She patted the thin mattress with her palm and Antony took that as his cue to join her. Once they were side by side on the bed and the baby was between them, snug and content, he took the moment of peace and quiet to admire his child and his wife.

Cecelia was so amazing to Antony. She gave him everything, really.

“You did well,” he told his wife.

“Nearly died, you mean.”

“You did well. Thank you.”

Cecelia sighed, running the tip of her finger down the slope of the baby boy’s nose. “Someone came to help me, didn’t they?”

Antony nodded. “A guy of mine, from my crew.”

“I think …” Cecelia’s brow furrowed before she said, “I think he called you Skip.”

“Probably.”

“What was his name?”

“Giovanni,” Antony said.

“He’s young, isn’t he?”

“Seventeen, actually.”

Cecelia frowned. “That’s young to be in the streets, Antony.”

“I was fifteen.”

“Still too young.”

Antony passed a look between his wife and son. “Ours will be young when they start, too. That’s just how it goes, Cecelia.”

“That’s different.”

“How so?” he asked.

“Whatever makes them happy makes me happy,” Cecelia explained, still enraptured by the sight of her child. “And if that’s Cosa Nostra, then that’s what it is. My job as their mother isn’t to judge them, it’s to love and support them. That other young man, however, isn’t my son. I just wonder, that’s all.”

“He’s a good kid. And he’s damn good at what he does.”

“He saved my life,” Cecelia replied. “And our baby’s.”

“He did.”

“Can we call him Giovanni, then?”

Antony smiled. He liked that name a lot. “Yeah, let’s call him Gio.”

• • •

March, 1990

Giovanni David Marcello screamed bloody murder at the priest as the holy water was splashed on his little forehead. For an eight week old baby who should have been sleeping eighteen hours out of the day, Giovanni was active and alert. He was also loud to an extreme, kept his mother and father up at night, and was nothing like his oldest brother. Giovanni wouldn’t suck on anything unless it was a bottle or his mother’s finger, he had to be rocked to sleep, and God forbid he couldn’t hear something going on around him.

Yeah, trouble.

Antony knew it already.

His youngest son was going to be a hellion.

Somehow, Antony just
knew
.

“
Shhh, bambino
,” Paulie said to the baby boy in his arms. “No being loud in church. It’s a rule, you know. You’ve got lots of those to learn yet, kiddo. Might as well follow the important ones.”

Antony laughed under his breath as the priest continued with the Christening. “Paulie, if that worked, Cecelia and I wouldn’t be as exhausted as we are.”

“Well, he’s cute at least.”

“That he is.”

Giovanni quieted finally, but Antony had a feeling that wouldn’t last long. His little
principe
liked chaos and noise. Most newborns preferred quiet and stillness. Not Gio.

While the Marcellos usually attended the boss’s church for most Sunday services, it was Antony’s demand that his boys be Christened in
his
church. This was where his parents had been married and where his great-grandfather attended his first service after getting off the boat from Sicily. Antony had also been Christened inside these walls.

This was his place.

Not Cosa Nostra.

His
.

Antony felt Cecelia’s fingers weave with his as Giovanni was blessed. All over again, at the sight of the man who’d splashed him earlier, the baby started to screech his godforsaken lungs out. Antony didn’t even bother to hold back his tired laughter that time.

Cecelia smiled. She was doing much better, although she hadn’t been able to leave the hospital for two weeks. More than once she’d pulled her staples trying to do shit she wasn’t supposed to. Antony appreciated his wife’s tenacity and independence. Cecelia was tough, strong, and frightening in ways a lot of people didn’t know and couldn’t see. Sometimes she needed to be told to cool it down and let others handle things.

Even if she didn’t like it.