Page 48 of Secret Baby for the Mafia Don

I am still terrified for myself and for Mateo, but this meeting between Mateo and his father is like a balm to my wounded heart.

I have felt such an immense amount of guilt about isolating my child for his safety. About lying to him and refusing to tell him who his father is.

The secret was so enormous that it felt like a lead weight holding my emotions down every day.

I have never been good at telling lies and this was one of the biggest lies anyone can be asked to carry. To be relieved of the burden is as cathartic as smashing a plate on the ground to alleviate one’s anger.

“Enough cuddle time,” Luca says as he pokes his head out the door. “It’s time to talk business, La Rosa.”

Elio casts a sharp, predatory glare at Luca, who has the good grace to look surprised for a moment before he pulls his head back inside and leaves the patio door standing open.

Panic comes to life in my chest like a bird trapped in a cage. I feel lightheaded for a moment and I press a hand to my brow to steady myself.

Elio stands and takes Mateo’s hand, then reaches out toward me as an invitation. I stare at his long fingers, I’m suddenly caught in a memory from our shared childhood of him practicing playing the piano.

I had forgotten that moment, back when we barely knew each other, but I think of it now as I grapple with the complexity of this life that he lives.

In the hallway, he was a killer, an avenging god from the heavens above planning to enact savage vengeance on the Baldinis. Here, on the terrace, he was a father, warm, inviting, and loving. Last night, in my bed, he was a lover who worshipped my body and taught me to trust him again.

How can all of these things live within the same man?

I watch my trembling fingers capture his and I feel weightless as he pulls me upright. My gaze feels narrowed to the sight of our clasped hands. I don’t notice anything else around me.

I don’t hear anything but a humming in my ears as I absorb this new understanding of the boy who I was betrothed to marry, now a man trapped in a complicated and dangerous life.

“Kate,” he says softly to me, squeezing my fingers. “It’s time.”

He could mean it’s time to go back inside. He could mean it’s time for me to move. But I know that he doesn’t mean either of those things. He means it’s time for him to try and change Mateo’s and my fate. For good.

I draw in a deep breath that doesn’t fortify me at all and allow myself to be tugged in the direction of the house. Mateo reaches up for my hand and I wrap my fingers around the pudgy digits like a lifeline.

I have never been religious despite going to church throughout my childhood and doing penance in proper Catholic fashion for my mistakes as a youth. I don’t know if the prayers playing on a loop in my mind are for the God I was raised to believe in or something more primal and ancient.

I look over at Elio, his face closed to me. He looks like the head on a Greek coin, frozen and caught in time, utterly above and beyond all of us on this plane. Azazel indeed, prepared to use his trickster ways to allow Mateo and I to escape to safety once again.

At the door, Elio lets us go without a backward glance, and I watch his lean, strong body walk behind Luca down the hallway.

Knowing that this could be the last time that I see him, I commit the sight to memory, clutching my arm around Mateo’s small shoulders as though I might keep him safe with my love alone.

Chapter Nineteen

Elio

“This is what we want from you,” Enzo says to me, pushing a stack of papers across his big, imposing desk in my direction.

I look down at it for a moment, gathering myself.

Every fiber of my being wants to wreak havoc on these two men; kill them with my bare hands. I was already furious with them for knocking me out and taking Kate right out from under my nose.

Now that I have met my son, my fury has been compounded by the addition of the protective instincts of a father.

I have killed many men when I was merely annoyed. Now my frustration is like a living demon trapped beneath my skin, happily emerging to snuff out an irritant with a snap of its fingers.

I can’t remember a time when I have ever felt this angry and the violent thing within me is clawing painfully against my ribs, battering to get out.

My skin feels stretched tight over my bones like someone with a dangerously high fever and I’m annoyed when I realize that my hands are subtly shaking with the force of my rage.

Some remote part of myself wonders why I am capable of feeling this depth of emotion when I am infuriated. And yet, I cannot seem to tap into the emotion that Kate wants most from me.

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