The Woman with the Scar (Costa Family)

Grape juice.

Because I was expecting our second. I was huge with him, in fact.

“Should you even be standing right now?” Alara asked. “Don’t you risk it popping out?” she asked, making me almost snort sparkling grape juice up my nose.

“That’s not really how it works,” I said, shaking my head.

“The whole thing is a horror,” she informed me.

In her defense, I’d made a major miscalculation of letting her come into the delivery room with me.

I’d never seen a person that shade of green before.

“I mean, it is ridiculous. We can put people on other planets, but we can’t figure out how to evolve enough that our spawn doesn’t claw its way out of our bodies.”

“Claw is a bit much,” I said, laughing.

“We can blame that one stupid ape. Or monkey. Or whatever it was.”

“What are you rambling about?” I asked, shaking my head.

“That’s apparently why our childbirth hurts more than other mammals. Because some stupid ape-like ancestor decided, Hey, I don’t like this walking on all fours thing, I am going to give walking upright a try, which puts all the pressure on the pelvis, not the belly, which widened and shortened our pelvis, making birth painful,” she explained.

“I bet it was a dude. A dude gorilla. That’s the only explanation,” Mira, Emilio’s sister, declared, having a similar fear of the whole pregnancy thing as my sister did.

“Right?” Alara said, nodding. “All our problems stem back to the men.”

“Exactly,” Mira agreed.

“Need I remind you that you are a happily married woman. To a… dare I even say it… a man,” I said to Mira, tone grave.

“Ugh don’t remind me.”

“Don’t remind you of what?” her husband asked, walking up behind her.

“That I’m straight,” Mira grumbled, making him laugh. “Stupid nature making me only attracted to your kind,” she added, wrinkling her nose at him.

“Oh, sunshine, you love me,” he declared, giving her hip a squeeze.

“Mostly against my will,” Mira insisted.

“What did men do wrong this time?” Vissi asked, looking around at us.

“Stood upright,” Alara declared. “Which eventually made childbirth painful. Which only a male monkey would do. So, yeah, I think it is high time that your kind start carrying the babies and letting them claw their way out of your junk for a change.”

“Oh, please. If they had to do it, there would be no more kids,” Mira said.

“I would stand up for men,” Vissi said, “but she’s probably right on that one. How are you feeling, Ez?” he asked, nodding toward my belly.

“Well, this one has been kinder to me than my sweet hellion of a daughter was. I wasn’t sick at all. So aside from kicking my bladder and playing Twister while I am trying to sleep, it’s been pretty easy.”

Which was good.

Because while I had been the one to struggle with our little girl, leaving Brio to be the calm, reasonable one, he was now the wreck.

He didn’t voice it, but he was clearly worried about having a son of his own, about the concept that maybe some part of his father’s evilness, and his own dark tendencies, might be hereditary.

It was silly, of course.

But I caught him staring at my belly at times with a look on his face I could only call fear.

Fear that he wouldn’t be a good father to a little boy. That he wouldn’t know how to show him how to be a good man.

Which was insane.

Since Brio was the best man I’d ever met.

Sometimes it was hard to shake your trauma.

So I was glad the pregnancy was easier on me, because it gave me time to hype up having a little boy, reminding Brio what a great father he was, how fun it would be for him to have a son.

Speaking of Brio…

“Absolutely not,” I called across the room as he picked up our daughter to let her look in at the box of kittens one of the guys had found behind their apartment building, and had brought to hopefully find homes for.

So, yeah, once upon a time, I’d told him that I forbade him from having impulse control when it came to animals.

But that sort of led us to have to leave our apartment and buy a brownstone because not even being a part of the mafia was going to let our landlord be okay with five dogs, two cats, a whole big cage of finches, and one solo betta fish.

Even with the extra space, we were pretty full-up at the moment.

Brio shot me a guilty look, then moved over to talk to Lorenzo while our girl toddled back over toward me, getting quickly swooped up by her Aunt Alara. Who, despite not wanting one of them to “claw its way out” of her body, absolutely loved kids.

“I like kids,” she’d told me once at her pawnshop. “The little assholes who hang out on the street told me that my music was lame. Keeps me humble.”