Ivy's Twisted Vine Redux by Latrivia Nelson (books to read for beginners .TXT) 📕

to move back there before it is all over. You know, my mother missed Ireland that way.” She drifted off in her thoughts for a moment and then sighed. “Until the day she died she always talked about it.”

Walking beside his mother through the long foyer embellished with stained glass windows, beautiful Victorian art and black marble floors, he suddenly wished for a more simple life again.

“It’s good to be home, Ma.” His voice was somber again.

“It’s good to have you home,” she said holding his hand. She was well aware of his sadness. It was a natural instinct that mothers possessed. Changing the subject as they entered the family room, she tried to revive his spirits. “So, is there a special woman anywhere around?” She always longed for her son to fall in love again.

“It would be just up your alley if there was,” Nicola said playfully. “Yeah, I think there is someone special, but she is just a friend.”

“Do I finally smell a relationship in the air?”

“We don’t have a relationship, ma. We have more of an understanding.”

“What is there to understand if she is special? Besides, friends make the best wives. I was your father’s friend for several months before we began to court. Now, nearly forty years later look at us. We are still in love.” She smiled at the thought of her husband.

“That’s old world love. Things are different now. Besides that, I doubt if I’ll be marrying her.”

“Why is that?”

Nicola thought about what he was about to say for a moment. Did he really want to tell all to his mother? She was such a delicate soul. Besides, she was the only woman in his life that still regarded him as an innocent. Why would he ruin such a wonderful feeling by revealing the real Nicola, a man of many women and secrets?

“Well, she would have to want to marry me.” He smiled at her.

“Any woman in her right mind would want to marry you. You’re beautiful, smart, and rich. You’re what they call the perfect catch, Nicola.”

“Ma, I’m not rich.” Nicola sat down in his favorite brown leather recliner and relaxed. “You and dad are rich. I’m a workingman. A cop for goodness sake.” He chuckled. “On that type of salary, I’ll never be rich.”

“But one day, we’ll die, and you’ll inherit our entire fortune. Well, you and your brother. And you boys couldn’t spend that much money in two lifetimes. And what about the Christmas and birthday package we give to you and your brother every year.” His mother was extremely proud of their fortune and how well her husband had done as a poor immigrant in the United States.

“Well for now, I am a working man. And I am in no rush to have you or pop die so that you can leave me anything. Thanks, but no thanks. Now as for the package twice a year…keep’em coming.” He said smiling at her as she grinned back at him.

As Liz sprayed her Ivy vine growing across the room above the wall-to-wall glass doors, she looked back at her son once more. “You haven’t asked about your brother, yet?” She could see bringing up the subject made Nicola jittery.

“Yeah, I know. So, how is your darling Santo?” Nicola asked looking away from his mother so she could not see the repugnance in his face.

“He is well, but you should go and see him while you are here, yes?”

There was a long silence before Nicola could no longer bare his mother’s stare. “Look, I’m gonna go up stairs and take a bath and get out of these traveling clothes, and maybe take a nap. I’ll be back down later.”

“Okay, honey,” Liz said dismissing all notions that her son had changed. Nicola was still stubborn and unwilling to compromise, much like all the Agosto men.

**

When Nicola awoke later that night it was nearly eleven o’clock. He had to adjust for a moment, remember where he was. It had been ages since had awakened in someone else’s house. Wrapped in his satin goose down comforter in his king size oak sleigh bed, he looked across the room in its darkness at his senior prom picture with Arin Antonelli, the captain of the cheerleading squad. His life was so different back. Then, he was a carefree teen engulfed in social activities and adolescent politics. All that mattered then was his red mustang convertible, his letterman jacket, his wardrobe and football. He had prided himself on being the perfect gentleman in school. All the girls wanted him, and he only cared for one. Arin.

Wanting to get away from Florida and his coveted circle of friends after a horrible break up with Arin, he took a football scholarship to Memphis State University in hopes of blossoming into his manhood and returning to home afterward a full grown, intelligent young bachelor ready to help his father in the family business and rub Arin’s nose in her all time biggest mistake.

However, Nicola never returned home to his protected lifestyle or his loving family. Instead in an attempt to break away and form his own identity his senior year in college, he signed up for the Memphis police Academy. Thus, bringing about a new man with new eyes for a new and more grotesque world of beaten women, dead victims, starving children, poverty stricken communities and so many drug users and drug dealers that he couldn’t lock them all up if they voluntarily lined up outside of the jailhouse. Now, he was a bitter oversexed drunk with a gun that he often thought of using on himself.

He paused for a minute. History on hold, he rolled over in bed and felt his aching ribs and painful bruises. He stared at the wall and felt a pain in the back of his head. It had been happening often since he killed Caesar in house. Panic attacks. He tried to slow it. He breathed in and out trying to calm himself,