The Sweetest Oblivion

Nico stops for gas. At the pump, he chastises himself for kissing Elena. She goes inside to use the bathroom and comes out looking upset. When she tells him the shop owner threatened her and touched her inappropriately, Nico is furious. She begs him not to hurt the man but Nico goes inside, threatens the man, and burns down the shop with him inside.

Back at home, Elena races into Salvatore’s office and insists Adriana can’t marry Nicolas because he is violent and angry. Nicolas barges in, insisting the gas station incident wasn’t his fault; the man touched Elena. Salvatore dismisses the issue.

Benito takes Elena to Tyler’s party although he has a bad gunshot injury from his recent job. On the way, they stop at Nicolas’s place in the Bronx. Elena is surprised by the homey brick house. While waiting for the men to finish, she watches the news. Then Nicolas enters and demands to know where she’s going; he doesn’t like that she’s wearing a white and pink bikini and a dress. While Benito is tending his wound, Nicolas cuts her bikini straps. She acts unfazed when Benito returns.

A few days later, Elena is still trying to make sense of her and Nicolas’s dynamic. She’s only had sex with one other person—the man whose death she feels responsible for—and feels confused by her feelings for Nicolas. She tells herself to forget their attraction because they can’t act on it anyway.

Elena attends a dinner with the Russo family at one of their restaurants in the Bronx. She stays by Adriana all night and they drink heavily to ease Adriana’s anxiety about the marriage.

Over dinner, Elena can’t help feeling jealous when she notices the attractive Gianna talking to Nicolas. She assumes the two have slept together, although Gianna is married. She feels even more upset when she overhears some Russo women in the bathroom talking about her. She realizes everyone sees her as the Sweet Abelli. Outside the bathroom, she runs into Nicolas. He pushes her against the wall and makes comments about her attire. She’s wearing black instead of her usual pink and white. Elena moves away to go out for a smoke but Nicolas refuses to let her smoke with the kitchen staff. She insists he can’t boss her around but agrees to borrow his lighter and let him accompany her for the cigarette.

Elena and Nicolas smoke outside together. They banter about their relationship and how it’ll change after Nicolas’s wedding. Nicolas gets annoyed and tells Elena to be quiet; if she doesn’t, he says he’ll be one of the men she’ll have to worry about assaulting her. Elena takes this as a joke and feels aroused. Then he instructs her to write the list of Adriana’s likes in his phone. While she’s writing the list, a naked photo of Tony’s girlfriend Jenny appears on Nicolas’s phone. Elena gets angry. Nicolas argues it doesn’t matter because Tony slept with his ex Isabel. Elena pushes his phone down her dress before he can take it back. She feels even more aroused as he fishes under dress to retrieve it.

After his encounter with Elena, Nico chastises himself for losing control. The last time he did something like this was when he had sex with Gianna while she was married to Antonio. At the same time, Nico can’t stop imagining sex with Elena. Back inside the restaurant, his cousins rib him about liking Elena. Suddenly angry with everyone, Nico sends Tony the naked photos of Jenny. Tony loses his temper and throws a glass at Nico’s head. A fight ensues.

Elena tends to Tony’s wounds that evening. Afterwards, she takes a shower and lies in bed trying to decompress. Thinking about Nicolas, she opens and closes the Zippo she took from him.

Elena goes for a run with her cousin Dominic the next morning. When they return, Nicolas is at the house. Salvatore calls her over so she can meet their other guest, Christian. Elena notices how attractive he is and wonders if she could direct her feelings for Nicolas onto him. Afterwards, however, Nicolas pulls her aside and warns her to stay away from Christian because he’s FBI. When Elena talks back, Nicolas threatens to cut off the hands of any man who touches her and send them to her in a box.

Frustrated with Nicolas and determined to get him back, Elena jumps in the pool in a pink bikini. She emerges from the water when Nicolas, Christian, and Salvatore are within view. Nico corners her and demands that she get dressed because no one will respect her. (She privately realizes she’s started thinking of Nicolas as Nico.) Then Elena tells Nico she doesn’t want him to respect her; he grabs her waist and again insists she go upstairs and change. When she resists, he picks her up and carries her inside.

Elena accompanies Adriana, Celia, and Gianna, and some of other relatives to the new penthouse Nicolas got for Adriana. As soon as she sees Nicolas, her “pulse patter[s] to an uneven beat” (146). They end up in the kitchen alone together. When Nicolas runs his eyes over Elena’s body, she feels aroused. He takes her face in his hands and moves his fingers over her mouth while telling her why he has an ace of spades tattoo—the first time he ever killed someone, he shoved “an ace of spades down his throat” (149).