“Okay, gattina, let’s get you dressed for bed.”
“Can we read Princesses?” Lia scooted her hands out of her towel burrito and threw them around her father.
He walked her out of the bathroom and across the hall, into her pink room. “Princesses? Again? That’s three bedtimes in a row. Pick another book.” He set her down and unwrapped her, then handed her a clean nightgown and panties.
Lia sat on the floor and stuck each still-chubby leg through her panties, then stood and pulled them up, bouncing and shimmying until they were over her bottom. “No, Papa. I want Princesses.”
“What if Elisa wants something else? It’s past bedtime. We only have time for one story. It should be her turn to pick.”
“’Lisa likes bad books. Too many words.” Lia pouted. “Princesses is the best book. There are sparkles in the pictures.” She pulled her nightgown over her head with a flourish.
His second daughter looked like the sweetest, shyest child in the world. With huge, green eyes, the lower lip of her little bow mouth fuller than her upper, her eyebrows canted down at the ends just a tad, she always seemed to be ready to cry. She did not cry easily, however. She was, in fact, a tough little cookie with a quick temper and a sharp tongue. But at three, she had already figured out how to use her sweet beauty to her advantage.
He was onto her, but it didn’t matter. She’d turn those eyes on him, and he’d cave. Picking up her little pink hairbrush, he sat on the edge of her bed and pulled her between his legs, turning her to face away from him. “Okay. Princesses. But then Elisa gets a story, too, and you have to sit quietly for it.” He ran the brush through her long, auburn hair, still damp from her bath.
“Ow, Papa!” She turned around and gave him a baleful stare. “You don’t do it right. I want Mamma.”
“Mamma’s sleeping with your baby sister. They’re tired. You’re stuck with Papa.” Carina had been born only ten days before. He turned Lia back around and resumed brushing her hair, going even more gently now.
She crossed her arms over her little chest. “I didn’t want a sister. I have a sister. I wanted a brother. Mamma wouldn’t be tired if she brought me a brother.”
After three girls in a row, Nick wasn’t sure they’d ever have a son. But his love for his daughters overwhelmed him. They were beautiful, brilliant rays of their mother’s sun.
“Well, God gave you a baby sister. And when she gets a little older, you can teach her how to be a good girl and let your mamma sleep.” He set the brush down. “Okay. Get Princesses, and let’s go to Elisa.”
She trotted over to her pink bookcase with the pink ballet shoes painted all over it and pulled out her pink copy of The Twelve Dancing Princesses. They didn’t actually need the book, Nick thought. He’d read it so many times he dreamed about their stupid secret dances. Twelve little girls defying their parents night after night. Fairy tales sucked.
Lia came over with the book tucked under her arm. She took his hand and pulled, and he came up off her bed. “You’re so strong, gattina.” She grinned, and they walked hand in hand down the hall to Elisa’s room.
He heard Carina crying behind the door to the master suite, and he stopped for a second, listening. It had been a hard week, and Beverly was exhausted. But the baby settled quickly.
“Papa! Come on!” Lia tugged on his hand.
“Okay, okay.” His eldest daughter’s door, covered in glittery stickers, was closed, and he shook his head, knowing what he’d find when he went in. He knocked and did just that.
Yep. She had artfully arranged her blankets, pillows, and stuffed animals to attempt to conceal a sizable lump on her bed. A lump with a bushy, golden tail sticking out at the end. Wagging.
“Elisabetta Pagano. You think you can fool me? Cuddles, down.”
He was a man drowning in pink and glitter, who had a golden retriever named Cuddles. That was his life now.
His perfect life.
Elisa stuck out her lip—she had that down, too. The dog stood up on the bed, casting pillows and toys to and fro, but still covered in the floral comforter. He was clearly confused, but he managed to find his way to the floor. He came over and sat at Nick’s side, looking up with shame in his eyes. There was a sparkly butterfly sticker on his snout.
“You know better, signorina. The dog does not go on the furniture.” They went around this circuit at least twice a week. Elisa kept trying new and different ways to smuggle the dog—whom she’d named; Nick had had no part in that—into bed with her.
“Please, Papa. He can keep me safe. I need him to watch my closet.”
“’Lisa is a scaredy-baby, ’Lisa is a scaredy-baby,” Lia sang. Elisa threw a pillow at her little sister.
Elisa and Lia were so-called ‘Catholic twins,’ born less than eleven months apart. From the moment Lia had the motor skills to yank a toy from Elisa’s hands, they had fought nearly endlessly.
“Enough, the both of you. Lia, you sit.” He pointed to the little, pink velvet armchair next to Elisa’s bookcase. Hearing the sharp tone in his voice, Lia did as she was told, her eyes enormous. He hated that look. The one that said Don’t be mean, Papa. It scares me. Even as he knew she was using it intentionally, manipulating him, it still skewered his heart.
He went and sat on Elisa’s bed. “There’s nothing in your closet to watch, Elisa. We talked about this. I checked it thoroughly.” At four, she was astonishingly smart—too smart for her age. She was an avid reader, and she paid attention to everything. She had his gift for seeing. It seemed like every day she picked up some random image from the television, or from overheard conversations, or somewhere, that was too much for her to understand. They made her anxious and wary. Already, they’d weathered her panics about climate change and zombies and war and child abduction—to name a key few. She was only four, but no amount of care seemed sufficient to keep her innocent; she’d pick up something from a passing stranger’s remark in the market and obsess about it for days.
This new terror of her closet had come just before Carina was born, from seeing a trailer for a horror movie on television. She’d come to tell them she couldn’t sleep, and they hadn’t known she’d been standing in the doorway until she’d started crying.
“Papa, please.” Her eyes brimmed with tears. They were blue, like her mother’s. Both girls favored Beverly, Nick thought, with her auburn hair and beautiful smile. Lia had his eyes. Carina had been born with a great shock of hair, almost black, like his. The jury was yet out on what color her eyes were.
He couldn’t withstand Elisa’s tears, or her very real fear. “You promise that he stays on the floor, and you keep your door open, so he can come and go as he pleases.”
The tears got blinked away, and she gave him a relieved little smile. “Yes, I promise. Hall light?”
“Of course. Good girl. Okay, pick your story. We have a long day tomorrow, so you both need to get to sleep.”
Elisa leaned over and picked up a book from the stack she kept by the bed. Nick sighed. A Little Princess. Everywhere he turned, there was a princess.
“Come, come, gattina.” He waved his fingers, and Lia scooted off the little chair and brought her book over. Nick sat back against the wall and tucked a daughter under each arm. He read princess stories until they fell asleep.
Then, with Lia sleeping on his shoulder, he tucked Elisa in and settled the dog at the side of her bed. He carried Lia to her room and tucked her in.
He stood in the doorway and watched the little heartbreaker curl into her ball and put her thumb in her mouth.
Then he went to check on his other loves.
~oOo~
“She’s at it again? You need a break, bella.” It seemed that Carina had spent about ninety percent of her first ten days of life attached to her mother’s breasts. Beverly’s right breast had never made milk as well as her left, and Elisa and Lia had both nursed frequently, too, but Carina never seemed to stop. Her longest stretch off the breast had been about forty-five minutes.
Mother and baby were both exhausted. As quickly as her body could make milk, the baby was taking it. “Ma is trying to get a big sleepover tomorrow night with all the kids. Carina, too. She wants to fill the house. She’ll have Connie stay over to help.” He stripped to his boxer briefs and slid into bed next to his wife and newest daughter. Beverly was on her side facing him, her hand holding Carina at her breast.
She looked absolutely drained, but she shook her head. “She’s too young to stay the night away from home. And I haven’t been able to express. She won’t stop feeding long enough. It all goes straight into her mouth.”
“It’s time to try formula. You can’t keep up like this.”
“No!”
He thought her militant ideas about breastfeeding had a tinge of lunacy, especially considering the limits of her damaged right breast—and since her nipples had started to crack and she’d been biting into a cloth diaper so the girls wouldn’t hear her scream when Carina latched. It ripped Nick’s stomach apart to witness that. But she wouldn’t discuss even the idea of supplementing. “I’m worried, Beverly. You need rest. I don’t know how to help.”
“I’m fine. It’s just hard right now, with everything going on. I feel like such a jerk saying that, though. I really am okay.”
Uncle Ben had died in his sleep, two days after Carina was born. Dr. Kerr had said his heart simply stopped. Aunt Angie had died six months before, and Ben hadn’t come back from that. He’d tried, briefly, but losing his wife was a blow he hadn’t been able to withstand. Nick understood.
His funeral Mass and burial service were arranged for the following day. The turnout was expected to be massive. The family had spent the past three days at vigil; people from all over New England and beyond had come to pay their respects to the legendary Don Beniamino Pagano and to kiss the ring of Don Nicolo Pagano.
And Beverly, with a days-old baby swaddled and slung across her chest, had been with him through it all. Until today, when she’d nearly passed out in the kitchen that morning, and he’d made her stay home with the baby. He’d called Skylar over and had her looking out for them both.
He’d taken the girls with him. Carlo and Sabina had hired someone to watch the children during the vigil, so Elisa and Lia had spent the days having fun with all their cousins, unaware of the mourning going on. Only Trey, twelve years old, had joined them at the funeral home.
“You’re not okay. I want you to stay home tomorrow, too.”
She shook her head. “I want to say goodbye. I love him—he was a father to me. And I want to be there for you.”
He leaned over and kissed her temple. “I love you, bella. You don’t have to be in the room with me to be with me. I carry your love wherever I am. All this is taking too much out of you.”
“Nick, I’m going. That’s sweet, and I love you, but I’m going.”
With a sigh of defeat, he said, “Remember when what I said went?”
“No.” She grinned, her light clearing away the clouds of her fatigue for a moment.
He chuckled and brushed her hair back from her face. “You know, outside this house, people are afraid to defy me. Important people.” Inside this house, much more important people had him wrapped snugly around very small fingers.
“Mmm-hmm. I know. Don Pagano, the god among men. At home, we remind you you’re a man. My man. Their papa.”
Indeed.
Carina had fallen asleep, so he lifted his daughter away from her mother and rolled to his back, laying her on his chest. She stirred and woke as she was moved, but she didn’t fuss. “You sleep while you can. I’ve got her.”
Without a word, Beverly wrapped her arms around his arm, leaned her head against his shoulder, and was asleep.
As his wife slept at his side, Don Nicolo Pagano tucked his infant daughter’s dark head under his chin and patted her tiny back gently. He reached to the nightstand for a fresh cloth diaper and eased it under her face in case she spit up. This one hadn’t spit up once yet, but Lia had regularly projected the stuff with force, and Nick remembered that lesson well.
In the dim light and bright peace of the bedroom of his home, his wife and daughters sleeping safely around him, Nick gave himself a moment to think about the future.
He had been the don in all but name since Aunt Angie’s death. Now, he needed to name an underboss. The man he named might well lead the family someday. It was not a decision to be made lightly, but he had the luxury of time to weigh the choice.
The Pagano Brothers family was in the thick of a period of great prosperity and had been at peace for years, since Alvin Church had been soundly and permanently defeated. No one had tried to crawl up from below and unseat them from their power, but Nick knew it was only a matter of time. In fact, he thought there was a likelihood someone—he had a couple of ideas who—might use the death of the first and, until now, only don of the most powerful family in New England as motivation to make the attempt.
Nick was ready if they tried. He saw the world as it was, and he saw far; that was his greatest strength. He understood the games men played. And he had learned from his uncle that the way to win was to be the one who owned the field and set the rules.
His uncle had been the most important, most formative influence in his life. He loved him more than he’d loved his own father. He would carry on his legacy. He would honor his memory. And he would keep the Paganos strong. Make them stronger.
The name would end with him, however. None of his cousins was part of this world, and he had married outside the blood. When his time came to name a successor, the organization would likely become known by another name, and the Paganos would fade into history.
Carina fussed a little, fighting the swaddle, and Nick was brought back to the moment. She didn’t like to be rolled up like a cannoli. The other girls had. Elisa could have been left content in a swaddle for hours, as long as her diaper held out. But this one liked to move. So he unwrapped her.
She was wearing only a diaper. Nick was glad; he loved the feel of her skin against his own. He spread the thin blanket she’d been wrapped in over them both and slid his finger against her tiny palm. Immediately, she clutched it in her fist, and he lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed it.
Out there, he was the don. In here, he was just a man.
~oOo~
“You should take this house.”
Nick turned to see his mother leaning her arms on the back of the settee. They were in Uncle Ben’s back yard. His funeral had packed Christ the King and had required most of the Quiet Cove Police Department to manage traffic. This gathering afterward of his family, friends, and associates would mark the last Pagano function here.
“Why would I? He has three daughters and eight grandchildren. And I have a home of my own.”
His mother shrugged and walked around to sit at his side. “This house has always meant the family to me. The head of the family should live in it. None of Ben’s girls or their families want it—they all have lives elsewhere.”
Nick shook his head. “No, Ma. My girls have a home. A good home. Lita, Cella, and Lucie will decide what they want to do with this.”
“They’ll sell it.”
Nick nodded; he assumed as much. None of Ben’s children or grandchildren lived in New England, and none of them would want to. Nick knew the terms of Ben’s will. He had been left all of Ben’s business assets, and Ben’s daughters and their children had been left his personal assets; the sums in both buckets were impressive. Nick was a wealthy man in his own right. If he chose to retire now, at fifty-one, his family would be set for life. But he had no intention of retiring.
His mother looked across the yard, and Nick followed her gaze, returning to the view he’d been enjoying before she’d come up behind him. It was a bright summer day, and all the children were playing happily, attended by their mothers and aunts, who were sitting around the table under the vine-draped pergola in a far corner of the expansive lawn. Sabina, Carmen, Rosa, Manny, and Beverly. Manny wa
s the only one who hadn’t added a child to the Pagano brood. She wasn’t a mothering type. Even now, as the women turned repeatedly to check on the children or jumped up to save one from some childish calamity, Manny simply sat in her chair and listened to the others talk.
He’d come out here to get some distance from the solemn deference inside the house. All week, men had been coming to pay tribute to him as the new don. He understood it, and he expected it. He would have demanded it, in fact, if it had not been forthcoming. But it had become oppressive. He’d needed a moment to recharge his batteries and cleanse his spirit. Beverly was right; his family was his balance. As his power had increased, more and more he needed the antidote that was his home.
In business, he was considered a god. At home, he needed to change diapers and peel sparkly stickers off his ass to remember that he was not.
Deep (The Pagano Family Book 4) Page 34