He was in the eye of a major storm in his life and all that he could do was brace for impact.
The questions kept multiplying in his head, yet the answers seemed so distant from him. If he were to prioritize his concerns, even for a second, the most important thing would be to keep his family safe. But it would be a lot easier to do that if he only knew who he was looking for in the first place. Ivy wouldn’t be receptive to staying home from work until he found out, and she really wouldn’t be receptive to leaving town and staying with his family in Miami until it was all over. So, he had to figure out a way to maneuver around her so that she didn’t feel that he was watching her every move, even though he would be. He had no choice.
The thought of hurricane winds ripping through a seaside city crossed his mind. That’s how he felt at that moment. Like he was being ripped into. But it wasn’t guilt for his actions; it was anger that he hadn’t done more. He should have pushed the man to a confession, especially since now he was in critical condition. He should have pushed him to a cliff and dangled him over, offering him death for silence or life or answers. Pity that he didn’t get enough time.
As Nicola sat in deep thought staring out of the window of his truck, more hyper alert than he appeared, he noticed a figure emerge out of the front door of his in-laws’ house.
At first, he figured that it was Ivy, but then he noticed a tall, muscular bald man closing the door behind him. Madison. Ivy’s father. One of the most militant black men that he’d ever met in his life. The retired military colonel probably had an earful for him. Madison had always stomached Nicola, but he was never really sure that he liked him. He was a quiet man who normally only showed affection to his grandchildren and the women in his family. Still, he had always given him respect. And in turn, Nicola had done the same.
Making his way to Nicola’s truck in pajama bottoms and a red Marine Corps t-shirt with a beer in his hand, Madison opened the passenger door and slipped inside. With a nod, he closed the door and settled down in the seat.
“So, do you plan to stay out here all night?” Madison asked, looking over at the cigar with envy. Sadie never let him smoke anymore.
In quiet understanding, Nicola moved his gun off his lap and put it carefully on his console between them, then reached across his father-in-law to his glove compartment. Pulling another cigar out, he passed it to him. “Consider it an early Christmas gift,” he said, sitting back.
Madison took the cigar in his hand and ran it under his nose, inhaling the aroma. “Real Cuban, huh?”
“Oh, yeah. Only the best.” Nicola grunted and shifted in his seat. “How’s Ivy?” He could barely look at Madison.
“Not well. She’s been a basket case since she received your text earlier.” Madison huffed, frustrated with the entire situation. He had received call after call all day about the boy. People wanted to know what Nicola was thinking. Like he knew. He wasn’t a damned mind-reader, just the boy’s father-in-law. Even Nicola’s father had called him. Evidently, Nicola’s twin brother had seen the story and alerted everyone in Miami.
“Is she pissed at me?” It seemed like nothing else really mattered in the world at that moment. Nicola just wanted to know that she was still by his side. If she was, then he could find a way to handle everything else.
Madison frowned. “Angry? No. She is confused. We all are. You went from a press conference being backed by the mayor of Memphis to a damned police brutality beat down that will go down in history in less than an afternoon.” He looked over at Nicola for an explanation. He had known the man long enough to know that whatever had brought all of this on had to be major. Nicola had grown to be a level-headed man, devoted only to his family and his job.
“Cops get threatened every day,” Nicola began. He almost laughed. “I remember the first time someone threatened my mom. I was fresh out of the academy and working with my FTO. This guy promised me that when he got out, he was going to find her and sodomize her.”
Madison cringed.
Nicola smacked his lips at the fleeting thought. His tone was even and low. “I wanted to kill him, but my FTO just told me to shake it off. He said that it was one thing that I could get used to… being threatened because of my job. Shortly after that, I saw what the FTO was talking about. Someone was going to fuck me up, kill my family, screw my wife even before I had one, every single day that I made an arrest.” He looked over at Madison to make sure that he was following him.
“So what was different about this arrest?” Madison asked.
“What was different?” Nicola looked out of the window and clenched his jaw. “Every cop worth his salt knows the difference between idle threats and the real thing. This was the real thing. He…the perp…threatened my family for real.” Nicola bit down on his lip. “He knew about Ivy being pregnant. He knew about Brooks’ death and the baby. He threatened my kids…said they would end up like the others. Just like the boys I pulled out of the fucking dumpster not even a week ago.”
Madison winced as if hearing the words hurt him to his core. “Do you think he has the capability?”
Nicola shook his head. “I don’t know if he does but someone he works for sure in the hell does.” He rolled his eyes and gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. “I don’t know anything anymore, except that I did what any man in my place would have done. I showed him that my job was not the most important thing to me…my family is. And anyone who threatens them won’t get another chance to do so as long as I’m around.”
That brought up another point for Madison. “I hate to risk sounding like a prick, but how long do you think you’ll be around? The news said that if you’re brought up on charges, you could go to prison.” Madison hated to say it, but it was true. They had to think ahead, at least starting now.
“I doubt if I’ll go to jail, but I don’t think they’ll let me be a cop anymore.” His voice broke in disappointment. All he’d ever known was being a cop. If they took that away, who would he be then?
Madison turned to Nicola. This was an area that he truly understood. He had retired from the military after devoting his entire adult life to it. Nothing was stranger than acclimating after. It was a hard pill to swallow to go from being saluted every day to being ignored by the person right in front of you. He touched Nicola’s shoulder in sympathy. “You’re a damned fine cop. They aren’t just going to throw you to the wind, but if they do, you have other options. You’re educated. You come from a damned fine family with opportunities they’d love to share with you. And you have your skills, no matter what. Just remember that you have to keep your cool. Getting fired isn’t the worst thing in the world. There is life after.” He shook his head and turned back around, fearful that he’d shown too much of himself. “As far as the family, you know that you’ll have my help. Ivy is my little girl, and my grandchildren mean the world to me.” He chuckled. “You I could do without.”
Nicola snickered and took another sip of his cognac. “Sorry, old man. You aren’t getting rid of me that easily.”
“Tell you what…why don’t you give me that bottle and go in there and see after Ivy? I’m sure that she’s dying to talk to you. And I’m not going to lie, she needs consoling. Your mother and I tried, but she only wants you. The kids are finally asleep. It took a hell of a lot of work. I don’t see how you two do it every single night. And the idea of another one…” His face lit up. “I can’t lie. That’s great news, but I hope it’s a girl. You’re just a few shy of a damned football team.”
“You didn't know she was pregnant?” Nicola asked.
“No, she still hasn’t said a word,” Madison said under his breath. “I imagine that with everything that happened today, she wouldn’t want to talk about that.”
“Do me a favor and don’t say anything yet,” Nicola asked sincerely.
“Mums the word.” Madison zipped his lips.
Nicola passed Madison the bottle and kept his quiet shock to himself. This was the first time in t
heir marriage that Madison had ever been so open and so intimate with him. “For what it’s worth, I appreciate you,” Nicola said, opening the car door.
Madison nodded and picked up the lighter. “I’m going to sit out here and enjoy this cigar before I go back into the wife and let her rip me a new asshole for smoking.”
“Bring the gun in with you. I’ve got another one on me,” Nicola said, raising his shirt slightly to show another Glock packed closely to his side.
“Beat you to it,” Madison said, tapping his side.
***
As quietly as he could, Nicola slipped upstairs to the guest bedroom where he found Ivy laying on the bed, curled up tightly in a ball. As soon as the door opened, her head popped up and crocodile tears ran down her face. She wiped them quickly and sat up in bed.
“Nicky,” she said exasperated, eyes wide.
“I’m sorry that I couldn’t get to you sooner,” he could barely look at her.
“Are you alright?” she asked as he walked up to her. She checked him for scars, roaming her hands all over his body. With a careful eye, she checked him thoroughly. “Did he hurt you?” the frown lines in her face creased harder as she tried to understand.
Not a scratch on him? Not one bullet. Not one stab wound. What could have made him do what he had done?
Nicola took her hands in his own and huffed. “I’m fine,” he said, truly afraid of how she might see him.
“But the video…” she sat back. “What happened that made you beat that man like that? They’re calling you a racist…a bigot…”
He calmed her with fingers over her soft, pouty bare lips. “I did what I had to do.” He prayed that she believed him.
“Why did you have to do it?” she pushed. Her nostrils flared as she tried to make reason of her husband’s actions.
Nicola sat down beside her and looked her in her eyes. “He threatened us. He knew sensitive, personal information about our family and our children, and I just lost it.”
“How personal?” she asked, heart thudding in her chest.
“He knew that you were pregnant.” Nicola paused, questioning if it was wise to share everything with her.
As if reading his mind, she gritted her teeth and grabbed him by his face. “Nicola, don’t shut down on me now. I have to know everything in order to protect you.”
A smile crossed his lips. Here he was worried about how to protect her from physical harm and she was still worried about protecting his image. He guessed that was why he loved her. She was always all in for him, even when he didn’t deserve her.
“He knew where we lived, about Brooks and the baby, about where our children went to school and their teachers’ names. He knew how often you and I made love.” Nicola could see that she was turning pale. Holding her hand tighter, he continued. “Maybe you were right. Maybe I did need to see a shrink and get some of this shit off my chest, but it was too late by the time that I came in to contact with this guy. He threatened our children, said the same thing that had happened to those other kids would happen to my kids.”
“Is he the Baby Boy murderer?” she gasped, hand over her mouth.
Nicola rolled his eyes. “No, he was sent by someone to get me off this case. I was just too wrapped up in the moment to see that.”
Ivy’s posture sunk into a sloping curve of grief. “Good god, Nicola.”
“I don't’ feel bad about it, Ivy,” he confessed.
Ivy looked over at him as he fidgeted with his wedding band and looked down at the floor. “I don’t feel like putting that punk in the hospital was such a bad thing. He’s alive right now, because I didn’t kill him. And after making the threats that he did to the only people I love in this world, he should be kissing my ass right now that he’s not dead. I could have killed him.” He looked over with an icy stare at his wife. I wanted to kill him, he thought to himself.
Ivy was lost for words but she knew that she needed to console her husband. “We’ll figure this out together. Whatever happens, we’ll do it together. You did what you felt was right.” She shook her head as she gained more clarity. “I would want you to support me if…”
Nicola laughed suddenly as he tried to picture Ivy beating the hell out of anything but bloody steak on a counter. “Don’t worry, baby. I don’t think that you’ll be in a brawl anytime soon.” He touched her chin softly and whispered. “All I care about is you and my kids, Ivy.”
His eyes, while red from exhaustion and worry, were clear with honesty.
She leaned in to whisper the words only inches from his mouth. “I love you too,” she said with the faintest of smiles.
Crooning to her soothing tone, he closed his eyes. “I love you,” he said, pushing his lips up against hers.
The softness of their soft flesh mingled together as his strong arms wrapped around her, gently pulling her from his side up in the cradle of his lap. There was a varying reaction in Ivy’s body, both excitement at his physical touch and worry in her heart. A wave of emotion washed over her face even as she melted into him.
“I love you so damn much,” he said again, running a hand over her shoulder and down her arms.
The soft curves of her body showing through her pink cotton nightgown slowly heated his desire pooling below. Even the frumpy pajamas did little to hide her voluptuous figure. The intensity of his fever pitch gaze made her bite her lip. He could never hide when he wanted her…and she could never hide how much that made her want him in return.
“The kids are sleep?” he asked, looking at the closed door.
Ivy nodded, running her hand down his rock hard chest. The taut muscles in his chest were bulging and wide. The crease down the middle of his chest was like a valley through a mountain.
“No one will be up to check on us?” he asked, slowly unbuttoning her nightgown. Control and domination laced his words.
Ivy nodded again. She knew what was coming and she wanted it as much as him, maybe more.
“Have you ever made love at your parent’s house?” he asked with a wicked grin. He pulled her nightgown off her shoulders once it was unbuttoned to reveal rigid nipples at the tip of full, melon-like breasts.
His mouth watered at the sight. She was absolutely beautiful and after all these years, she was still absolutely his.
Maybe it was just pheromones, but Ivy felt a sudden mix of heady lust overtaking her. “No, but I have a feeling that you’re about to change that.” She arched her back and rested her hands on his wide set legs. “Let me make you forget about it all, Nicky,” she said, voice husky. Her eyes met his and locked him into a trance.
“You already have,” he said, pulling her to him. Searching her mouth with a harder, more passionate kiss this time, he nestled his hands into her hair before pulling her into the full-sized, sleigh bed with him.
He laid her flat on her back and was quick about pulling his shirt off. With an impatient hand, she reached for the buckle on his jeans and snapped the clasp. He pulled them and his black briefs down obediently to his ankles and then kicked them off with his boots on the floor.
In the darkness and silence of the room, he moved on top of her and pushed her loose strands of hair from her face. Kissing her cheek, he slipped a hand under her thigh and lifted it slightly. She felt the tip of him at the door of her sex. A slight brush of skin against her own caused a shudder. Goose bumps formed on her skin. Raking nails down the side of his wide back, she arched her back for him to enter.
A cold hand grabbed her by the waist and then pulled her further down into the bed. Slipping his head into the fold between her neck and shoulder, he pushed into the warmness of her body and gasped.
They had to be silent tonight.
No sounds beyond a whisper.
Her mouth flew open as he filled her. Swallowing down a moan, she wrapped her arms tighter around his neck.
“Ivy,” he whispered. Her name floated off his tongue like a melody.
“I’m right here,” she said, holding him tighter
. “I’ll always be right here.”
He lifted his head and looked into her eyes. The connection panged in his heart. “I need you,” he whispered into her mouth. “I need you now more than ever.”
“I’m not going anywhere. None of us are. We’re your family.” She moved his hand down to her stomach. “All of us.”
He looked down at her hand, and still inside of her, pushed again. “You’re all I’ve ever needed. As long as I have you, I’ll make it.”
She wrapped her legs tighter around him and undulated under his body. The heat between them began to rise.
“Then you’ll make it,” she said, kissing his lips again.
She tasted like sweet nectar. Dipping his head, he kissed her back, deeper and deeper he lapped at her wet until he pushed her down into the bed. All reason had gone from him then. He emptied all of his emotions into her with each and every slow, powerful pump into her body. Slipping his knuckle into her mouth for her to bite down on so that she wouldn’t scream aloud, he wrapped his other arms around her lower back and pulled her in.
She was locked into his warm embrace, a prisoner of his touch, and she loved every moment of it. Although tonight, he was more urgent. She could tell that making love to him was healing him in ways that words could not. There were wounds there that she hadn’t noticed before, invisible to the eye, but to the touch…she could feel it there, torturing him. The murder of all those children, the pressure to find their killer, the worry of protecting his family.
Holding him tighter, she whispered, “I love you.”
It was then that she felt him grow harder inside of her. “I love you,” he whispered. “I love you so much.”
13
Johnson threw a black bag of garbage into the can in the backyard of Carmen’s house and instantly thought of the twins he had pulled out of the dumpster near the zoo. Flashbacks were just a byproduct of his profession, but it didn’t mean that he had to like them. He hated, in fact, the constant reminders of all the children who had gone missing and come up dead on his watch. Quietly he committed to seeing this case solved, but he had to keep better composure than his partner had. Damn, Nicola had lost his shit on a historical level. So much so that even he had to dodge reporters. Everyone wanted a piece of him, wanted to get the inside scoop. Even the guys on the force were stalking him. They all wanted to know what really happened.
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