Page 68 of Secret Baby for the Mafia Don

Grazia’s eyes are wide in her face. “Are you serious?” she asks me. Then, “When is it?”

I look over at Kate, who is climbing back into her hospital bed. She settles in and pulls the blanket over herself again to keep her bare legs from getting chilly.

She looks too frail to walk down the aisle now and I’m not sure what to say. I don’t want to rush her.

“Well,” Kate says with a soft smile, “we’ve been engaged since we were teenagers. I don’t think we need any time to decide if we really do want to get married, do we?”

“When are you getting out of the hospital?” Grazia asks, glancing between us. I feel like I can see the wheels turning over in her mind at a million miles an hour.

“It appears that I am just in time to answer a very important question,” Doctor Gregory says, coming into the room. “I was just coming by to tell you that I think you can be discharged three days from now. You’ll have follow-up care to schedule and you’ll need to continue your physical therapy, but otherwise I think you can be released to go back home.”

Kate’s smile looks relieved more than anything else. I know she has been chafing at being in the hospital. She was always the kind of person who loved being outside and being active.

Being cooped up in a hospital room for this long has been hard on her. Worse even than being a Baldini captive or in a Mexican hideaway.

“How exciting!” Grazia exclaims, clapping her hands. “What if I set the wedding for two weeks from now? We could rush order a dress and I can find the perfect venue. You just need to tell me the budget.”

I glance at Kate who just shrugs with a smile. I am having a tough time wrapping my head around the changing tides of our relationship with the Baldinis, but Grazia’s enthusiasm is catching.

“The budget is pretty much limitless as far as I’m concerned, so long as Kate is happy,” I tell Grazia. I raise a hand, “But I absolutely refuse to be married at your family home. I’m sorry, but it is one of the ugliest houses I have ever visited, in my entire life.”

Grazia stares at me for a moment, blinking. Then she bursts out laughing. “I hadn’t even considered that we would have the wedding there,” she assures me. “Actually, I was thinking about asking if you wanted to have the wedding in Mexico. We could invite your parents.” She glances at Kate, waiting on her reaction.

Kate’s eyes are shining with tears and she nods. “I have missed my parents so much,” she whispers. “I hadn’t even considered that we could finally tell them that I’m alive.”

“It’s okay Hun, you’ve had enough on your plate with healing. Oh, this is going to be amazing!” Grazia says excitedly. “You’d better call your parents right away and tell them the date! I have a lot of things to pull together in a short number of days!” Grazia is on the phone before she even leaves the room and I laugh.

“Do you want me to call them?” I say to Kate, getting up and coming over to the bed to hold her hand.

She swallows hard, tears on her cheeks as she struggles with the realization that she can finally talk to her parents again after so many years, she’s finally safe. “You’d better start the conversation,” she whispers.

I nod and squeeze her fingers. “Are you sure you’re okay with me not, well, proposing properly or anything?” I ask her.

She laughs, and wipes at the tears that are still slipping down her cheeks. “Oh, Elio, I never needed that from you. I just wanted to know that you loved me. That was all I ever needed to be sure that we were meant to be together.”

I look down into her face, realizing that I could have made so many things easier for both of us if I had just been honest with her all those years ago.

I could have just told her that I loved her, I could have just admitted that to myself and we would have been together all of these years.

“I love you,” I whisper to her, kissing her soft lips. “I have always loved you. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”

She shakes her head and sniffles. “It’s fine. I have everything that I ever wanted now.” She looks down at Mateo who is snuggled into her side, playing a game on my phone.

She looks up at me again. “All I ever wanted was for my family to be together.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Kate

I look at myself in the mirror and smile.

I’m still a little too thin, but there’s a healthy glow in my cheeks. The makeup artists have made me look more beautiful than I ever thought I could.

The mass of my dark hair is piled in artistic waves on top of my head. I look like a true mafia princess, soon-to-be queen, and I am surprisingly pleased about that fact.

I had always imagined that Elio and I would just sneak away to some beautiful beach and get married with just a couple of witnesses. When I was younger, I had wanted to have him all to myself on the day we exchanged our vows.

I guess I had believed that having witnesses would make the moment less special and less important to me.

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