You had never seen Nick's family so tense. It was two days after the brawl at the wedding. You, your husband, his sister Sonya and his mother Cesaria all sat at the table. Nick's daughter, Zara, was on her I-Pad, pretending not to listen.

From the moment Nicolas Amaro Sr entered the pretcinct three days ago, you had known it would be bad news. All your time you'd known Nick, heard of the stories he'd told you and the other detectives, you knew his arrival meant nothing good.

You swore you had some kind of intuition. As soon as you sensed that bad energy, it all went wrong. Nick's father — a gaslighter and abuser — had given his new twenty-eight year old bride, Gabriella, a concussion, at the party on the eve of the big wedding.

Now, with everything on hold after the brawl and your fellow detectives had come to the scene, you sat at the table in your husband's house in Alphabet City.

Nick, who had a conflict of interest, had been taken off the case. That didn't stop him and the rest of his family from arguing about it.

Sonya chimed in by saying that Nicolas would never hurt Gabriella, and Nick bristled. It seemed both his sister and mother were more worried about the family than what had happened.

You could see how irritated Nick was growing with each passing moment. After all the bullshit — the abuse from his father, the wedding being in New York, his sister bringing his daughter Zara from LA so he would have to attend, the brawl at the party, and now this, you wondered how your husband hadn't gone mad yet.

And then Cesaria then said that Gabriella must have done something to aggravate Nicolas.

"Are you kidding?! So you're saying she deserved it like you did?" To which his mother yet again defended him, saying that his father wasn't the man he used to be.

Nick wiped his mouth with a napkin, and you could see his hands clenching around the fabric. Nick breathed through his nose. "Tell him to plead guilty. He'll get community service and anger management."

Sonya rolled her eyes. "Lot of good that's done you." Nick glared at her as their mother told him off, the tension growing higher. "Don't let him do this. He will destroy the family."

Nick scoffed before you could stop him. "Hey, it's too late. Papi already did that!" The words were like a freight train through a small town.