Page 10 of Mafia King's Surprise Baby

I should never, ever forget it.

Chapter 3

Leo

I can’t help it—my gaze follows Bianca throughout the afternoon and evening, the wedding reception in full swing around us.

She’s smiling, yet it also looks strained. Has anyone noticed how the corners of her lips are aligned, meaning it’s not the crooked smile, the bright, carefree, true one she radiates with when she’s happy? Not like the bubbly, joyful woman who a few hours ago threw herself into my arms to greet me and then redid my bow tie as if that was her duty and not a favor she was doing a childhood friend. The sparkle in her eyes? It’s gone. Replaced by a dimness that’s thrown a cloud on her whole demeanor.

She’s attentive to Hana throughout, attending to her maid of honor duties with consideration and dedication. However, it feels to me like she’s checked out, just going through the motions. Some version of her is present, but not the whole of her.

My mind goes back to that night on the pier, the girl sitting next to me. The dejection today feels similar, and it’s breaking something inside me.

Seven years ago, I was too stunned to do anything to make Bianca’s life happier. Even if just in that moment, I could’ve done something to make her smile, laugh, rekindle the joy in her eyes again.

I approach and gently grab her arm. Now’s not the time to let my senses go haywire thanks to the feel of her smooth, warm skin under my palm. It feels like silk, but I can’t think this way. She’s off-limits to me. All I want is to make her smile fully again, to bring the joyful girl I remember to the fore. To make amends for not noticing her plight earlier.

Though what would that have changed? She’d still be a daughter from aBorgata, and we all have our duties in the big scheme of the Italian-American Mafia.

But today, I can try to brighten her world. What harm can that do?

“I need your help with something,” I say in her ear.

A whiff of her perfume assails my nostrils. It’s heady, sweet, and intoxicating. Like the woman herself.

Someone should be protecting her. Cherishing her. Ravishing her when he’s not showering her in romantic gestures and gifts and—

Bianca turns big brown eyes onto me, and it’s like a sucker punch lands in my gut, obliterating all my thoughts, blanking my mind. So much swirls in their depths, I get lost in her gaze, everything else forgotten, the world melting away.

Is this how it feels to lose yourself in a person? I’d heard my friends say this about the woman who won their hearts. Angelo said it about Prema, despite her being a psycho. She completed his world, and that was that for him. Checkmate.

“Yes, Leo?”

Her throaty murmur makes me want to close my eyes and savorthe sound. Is this how she sounds in a bedroom, asking her lover to take her, to fuck her harder, faster? I’m getting hard so fast, it’s physically painful.

But this is Bianca. A woman who brings up so much more than lust inside me, as I’m finding out today. Has it been just a couple hours since she walked into my life again, since the very version of perfection I never could pinpoint materialized in front of me in this sinful blue dress?

Can’t. Have. Her.

I need to look from afar and never touch. The sooner I remind myself of this, the better.

So I take a deep breath and recenter my focus, on duties of a best man I’m letting slide.

“Let’s play a prank on Mattia.”

Bianca looks slightly confused. “Aren’t you cutting his tie later?”

I nod. “Yes, but he’s expecting that. Everyone knows that’s part of an Italian wedding celebration. The auction proceeds will go to this animal shelter Hana’s discovered in town.”

“That’s true,” she replies. “What do you have in mind?”

Did her voice sound more enthusiastic suddenly? Good. Because I want nothing else than to bring the sunshine back into her life. That’s what she has been all along—the sun in our worlds.

“Come with me,” I say as I grab her hand.

Her fingers entwine with mine, so naturally, and it strikes me how right this feels. Like they’ve found their place.

Bad line of thought.

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