Chapter 12 - MY MOTHER HAD CHOSEN NICO YEARS BEFORE WE MET
Eleanor Hart looked thin in the video.
Cancer had already carved shadows beneath her cheekbones.
But her voice was strong.
“Evie, I hope you never need this.”
Apparently every parent in our families enjoyed beginning that way.
She continued.
“Lucia and I created a contingency structure for our children because men around us confused inheritance with ownership.”
I looked at Nico.
He was staring at the screen.
“If Hart Meridian becomes compromised and Lucia’s son survives Vincent’s organization without becoming him, then Nicholas may be the safest person beside you.”
Nico flinched.
My mother had evaluated him as a teenager?
Eleanor smiled faintly.
“He is difficult.”
I laughed through tears.
Nico looked offended.
“He is suspicious, proud, emotionally constipated—”
I laughed harder.
Even Rebecca smiled.
“But he once did something at seventeen that told me who he could become.”
The story:
A Caruso driver accidentally struck a cyclist.
Vincent wanted the family to bury the case.
Seventeen-year-old Nico secretly paid the victim’s medical bills, found witnesses, and forced his father to settle publicly.
He took a beating for it.
Literal.
Lucia had told Eleanor.
“He understands power can be used against itself.”
My mother looked into the camera.
“That does not make him good.”
Nico muttered:
“Thanks.”
I smiled.
“It makes him capable of choosing good when it costs him.”
The room went quiet.
Then Eleanor spoke to me.
“Do not marry him because I trusted the possibility.”
My heart tightened.
“Marry no one because a dead woman arranged paperwork.”
Good.
“Choose him only if he lets you remain fully yourself.”
I looked at Nico.
Separate bedrooms.
Locked connecting door.
No demands.
He had misunderstood me.
But he had not claimed me.
Then the final instruction:
“And Nicholas, if you are watching this too—”
Nico stopped breathing.
My mother addressed him directly.
“You are not marrying a socialite.”
I smiled.
“She is smarter than both our families will enjoy.”
Nico looked at me.
Very slowly.
“Eleanor knew?”
Everything.
Apparently.
“Do not make her smaller so you can feel larger.”
The video ended.
No one spoke.
Then I said:
“Well.”
Nico leaned back.
“Your mother insulted me from the grave.”
“She liked you.”
“That was liking?”
“Very much.”
Something shifted between us.
Not treaty.
Not strategy.
Choice beginning.
Then Rebecca interrupted.
“We have another issue.”
Of course.
My Columbia status.
The emergency marriage had caused me to miss exams.
My academic dean had requested explanation.
I stared.
After murder plots, trusts, mafia families, and federal investigations, the thing that terrified me most was failing constitutional law.
Nico saw my face.
“What?”
“I may have to repeat the semester.”
He looked genuinely horrified on my behalf.
“That’s unacceptable.”
I pointed.
“No threatening Columbia.”
“I wasn’t—”
“You were thinking it.”
“I was thinking lawyers.”
“Still dangerous.”
The dean granted emergency accommodations after Rebecca confirmed I had been a material witness in a federal investigation.
I took my postponed exam six days later.
Nico drove me.
Personally.
No guards inside campus.
When I came out, he stood holding coffee.
“How was it?”
“Brutal.”
“Who do I need to—”
I glared.
He stopped.
“Support emotionally?”
“Better.”
Then he handed me coffee.
My first real laugh around my husband happened outside Columbia Law School.
And for the first time, I wondered what would happen when our twelve-month escape clause arrived.
May you like
The answer frightened me.
I might not want to use it.
