Page 74 of Mafia King's Surprise Baby

“All this happened because of me.”

I don’t like how small her voice has gotten. I pull away, cupping the back of her head to make her look up at me.

“It wasn’t your fault. None of this was.”

“The war. It happened because I left.”

“It happened because those damn fuckers we call our leaders were pussies looking for an easy way out.” I won’t let her believe this is on her. “Instead of fighting like men, they chose to pressure an innocent girl into an alliance. They were already looking for a replacement for you within a few weeks.”

Bianca sits up straighter and lowers her head. “But you killed Ardian. An eye for an eye, that’s what it was.”

It’s like acid is burning my gut as the secret my father told me not to divulge to anyone sits inside me and I choose to honor my word. What I wouldn’t give to be able to tell Bianca this. But I made a promise to a dying man, and I will respect that.

“His death meant something,” I tell her, using his own words. “It brought us peace.”

“Which I can upset by being back,” she says, biting her lower lip.

“The treaty has been signed. No one can go back on this now.”

“But the syndicate can put pressure on you,” she adds.

My whole body tenses with rage and contempt for our organization’s leadership. “You leave the syndicate to me.”

I have an heir now, and I don’t know how that changed me, but I feel powerful now. Unstoppable. I live on inside that boy, and this, no one will ever be able to take away from me. I’ll protect this child of mine with all I’ve got.

“Leo?”

“Yes?”

Bianca blinks softly. “What about us?”

I frown. “What about it?”

What is there to discuss? She’s here, we have a son, we belong together. Her body wasn’t lying in the way it responded to me earlier. She told me she loves me, that she has loved me all along. I love her, too.

She bites her lip again. “My father and Mattia. We have their blessing to be together, in case you’re wondering.”

“You think I ever needed anyone’s blessing to be with you?”

I said this not in a menacing way but with some lightness thrown in. She must know what she means to me.

“No,” she replies.

“Then what?”

As I watch her sitting there in silence, a thought strikes me. I’m thinking of myself in all this, but what about her? She admitted she came back only because my son needs my protection now. She never spoke of herself in there.

Trepidation starts beating an erratic drums’ beat with my heart. But I have to ask this.

“What is ityouwant, Bianca?”

She shrugs, which doesn’t give me much of an answer. Or does it? Insight is flowing into me, and though I am loath to face it, I know I must look at everything squarely in the eye.

Bianca only came back to protect her child. She left because she was thinking of him. All this time, she’s been thinking like a mother. That little boy, Enzo, he’s ours. He’s my son; I’m his father. With this title comes a host of responsibility I wasn’t looking at clearly. Now, I do, and all I see is this innocent, defenseless, clueless child sleeping upstairs who has no idea the only world he’s ever known has just been upended and things will never be the same again.

It dawns on me then—me and Bianca, we can’t jump into anything right now. We have our son to consider, and he’s paramount in all this. Not us. Never us anymore.

I pull away from her, staring into her face, searching her features for her reaction to what I know I have to say.

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