Page 6 of Mafia Don's Secret Baby

Having Lilianna back…well, that changed things.

“Why are you back?” I asked her.

She flinched from the hostility behind my words, and I made a note to soften my voice around her.

“I couldn’t miss Si’s wedding,” she said. “He was excited to see me afterward. To—to introduce me to his wife.”

The tears that had briefly stopped were running down her face again, but she brushed them away with the back of her hand.

“You didn’t tell me you were leaving.”

The anger I’d felt when I learned she’d run away after sleeping with me still coursed through me as I thought about it. It didn’t matter now—not after all that had just happened. But as I looked over at her, the wound still felt fresh.

“I couldn’t stay,” she said.

I didn’t push, not as I saw the grief in her eyes that swallowed every other emotion whole. We could talk about this later, but for right now, we both needed to grieve—her for her lost family and me for my lost friend and alliance.

I drove through the city, taking the roundabout way to my penthouse apartment. I kept a keen eye on all the cars that surrounded us, and I mercifully concluded that none of them appeared suspicious. I didn’t need more conflict to deal with tonight.

I pulled into the underground garage of the building and put the car in park, taking a deep breath to steady my still-racing heart. The adrenaline of the night still pumped through my veins, and I tightened my grip on the steering wheel before releasing it and stepping out of the car. I walked around to Lili’s door and pulled it open.

She climbed out, then turned back to collect the child from the back seat, lifting him and pulling him into her chest. It was almost as if she couldn’t get enough contact. As if she needed him close after all that had happened.

“Whose kid is that?” I asked. We couldn’t bring him here—not when we didn’t know how far this coup went.

“He’s mine.”

My heart skipped a beat in my chest as I stared at them together. His eyes moved up and met mine, and I saw the familiar light green. They had the same noses. They were similar in a lot of ways.

“Yours?” I repeated. I watched as she struggled to find words for a moment. “The dad?”

“In Italy,” she said immediately.

I clenched my jaw and nodded as I took it in. The woman I’d been thinking about for years—the woman who had taken and run away with the last warm piece of my heart—had been a mother for all these years.

“And you’re with him?” I asked, my voice hardening.

“He’s not in the picture.”

That loosened the slowly tightening strains of anger that had been working through me.

Lilianna wasn’t with the boy’s dad, and that changed everything.

Chapter Three

Lilianna Genovese

It took three times as long as usual, but Callum finally fell asleep in my arms.

I took great care to lay him in the full-sized bed that we’d be sharing this evening. I covered his small body with the comforter, and he sleepily pulled it under his chin as his breathing remained rhythmic and steady.

Today had been exhausting for all of us, and I’d soon follow him to bed.

But I had a few things to discuss with Matteo first.

As I eased from the room silently and clicked the door shut behind me, I wiped my dry eyes with the back of my hand. They felt like sandpaper. I tried blinking it away, but nothing could rehydrate them after all the tears I’d shed today.

Memories pelted me more quickly than I could process them. Everything I saw reminded me of something we’d experienced together as children and teenagers. I noted a bottle of Crown Royal Blackberry on the bottom shelf of Matteo’s collection and remembered the first shot I’d taken with my brother.

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