Page 52 of Mafia King's Surprise Baby

Does Mattia pick up on this, that she’s brushing him off?

“It just…” he starts. “Bianca sounded just like that when she spoke French.”

“Hearing a woman speak French triggered you,” Hana says.

I gulp and close my eyes tight. I’ve known all this time she was protecting me, but hearing her now, it dawns on me. Hana is gaslighting my brother, her own husband, and she’s doing all this because of me.

I can’t let this go on, can I? But what other choice do I have? I can’t go back. Even if Mattia gets suspicious—and why would he after almost four years—even he won’t ask me to come back to New York should he decide he actually heard Bianca and not Bérénice on the phone right now and flies over to check.

No, I’m letting doom grab hold of my mind. I have to focus. I’m doing all this for my son, and that’s what matters.

Enzo is already tuckered out by the time I get to the bedroom. I put him down carefully on his bed. There’s no point trying to get him cleaned up and changed now as he’ll just wake up in a foul mood and sniffle for the rest of the day. I get an antiseptic wipe and run it on his skinned knee, then leave the room.

On the threshold of the living room, I stop. Hana’s still on her call, and I bite my lip when I hear Mattia’s voice again. I never knew how much I would miss him. Knowing he’s there and that I left my life as Bianca Bonucci behind is one thing, and I was able to deal with that. Then Hana came after Enzo’s birth, and when she thought I was asleep, I heard her talking to Mattia. Hearing his voice, it reminded me how far he is from me, how I can never go back to see him again.

Today’s no different. My heart squeezes, tears forming in my eyes. I can’t let them fall.

I hear Hana say goodbye and end the call. When silence echoes for a full minute, I step out into the living room, making sure to face her and not risk ending up being picked up by her phone camera.

“It’s okay,” she says. “Coast is clear.”

“He heard me, though.”

“No, he thinks he heard Bérénice.”

I sit down across from her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you’d be on a call. Enzo tripped at the park and—”

Hana jumps to the edge of her seat. “Oh my God, is he okay? Does he need a doctor?”

I smile, still charmed by her mother hen tendencies. It’s been this way since she came here two months ago. Tensions were running high in New York, Mattia worried the Albanians might come after the families of leading Mafia men. He sent her back to Tokyo where he knew she’d be safe. When she was here after Enzo’s birth, the two weeks she spent with us, he was in an incubator in the NICU. She cared for me more during that time.

“It’s just a skinned knee, Han. He’ll be right as rain by tomorrow.”

“Still. Shouldn’t you monitor for fever, for an infection?”

I stare at her fondly. I was just like her a few years ago. At the first sign of any trouble with Enzo, I’d be speed-dialing his doctor, who conveniently chose to not understand my English and broken Japanese and continuously told me to let my son grow as all these little ailments weren’t known as growing pains for nothing. Hiro, poor guy, was the recipient of all my new mom anxiety back then.

Today, I know when to let life run its course and when to get alarmed. Motherhood does that to you. I’m not blasé, but I can weigh the importance of everything affecting my son’s life.

Hana still has the anxiety-clouded goggles of someone who hasn’t gone through these trenches yet. My heart clenches forher. She and Mattia have been trying for a baby all this time, and still nothing.

“He’s fine,” I reassure her.

She deflates with a big sigh, but something tells me there’s more to her sagging than the relief surrounding her beloved nephew.

“What’s the matter?” I ask her.

She sighs again. “Mattia wants me to come home.”

I frown. “It’s safe for you?”

“Yes.”

A lulling pause settles in the room. Hana has this way of keeping things secret. She’s good at compartmentalizing. So this silence? I know there’s something she’s not telling me. Should I press her for more?

“I don’t want to go,” she finally says.

I tense up. “What do you mean? Something wrong between you and Mattia?”

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