Page 78 of Mafia King's Surprise Baby

Enzo asks me who the man with Uncle Mattia is in French.

My gaze catches Leo’s. He’s doesn’t speak French, but what I’m about to say next, he’s bound to understand.

Without breaking eye contact with him, I press a soft kiss to our son’s head and smile.

“C’est ton papa.”

It’s your dad.

There. The bombshell has been dropped. I wonder how both father and son will react now.

Chapter 22

Leo

I don’t know French, but the word Bianca used, I have no trouble deciphering what it means.

Papa.

Father. Dad.

She just introduced me to our son without any further preamble. Talk of being thrown in at the deep end. But then again, what else would she have said? Told him I’m a ‘friend’ of the family? What’s that going to mean to a three-year-old? I don’t think it’s hard to scar a child that age, but little kids, they also roll with the figurative punches. He’s not going to wonder where his father has been for the past three years.

A wave of anger rises in me. I lost all this time in my son’s life. I didn’t get to see him being born, didn’t get to feel him kicking inside his mother’s womb, witness his first step, his first word. I didn’t get to see Bianca’s belly swelling with my seed. There will be another pregnancy, because she is mine and I’m never letting her go, but Enzo, he’s our first. There’s so many firsts we should’ve lived together where he’s concerned.

“Let me take him to get cleaned up and we’ll come back down,” she’s saying.

I want to stop her, but she’s not going anywhere. She’ll be back.I force my heartbeat to calm as I nod, watching them go back up the stairs, the kid chattering away with her. Damn it that I don’t know French.

“He changes everything,” Mattia says.

I turn to him. A sigh escapes me. “You’re right. There’ll be hell to pay.”

“The syndicate won’t be happy. Have you thought about how we’ll go about this?”

“Coming up blank,” I bite out.

I didn’t sleep for the whole night, my head not even hitting a pillow once I got home. Though it’s not the lack of sleep that has me at a loss. I sat nursing a glass of Scotch in my father’s study during the past few hours, counting down until the sun came up, then a reasonable time to head back to Mattia’s to see Bianca and Enzo again.

I’m a father.

The thought kept rolling inside my head all along. And this definitely changes everything. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for Bianca, but I’m finding already there’s even more I would push and crush and crumble down where my son is concerned. He’ssangre—my blood, and blood calls to blood. I understand it now. Love has a place in there, too. My own father taught me that. Love and loyalty are a dangerous combination.

“We’ll have to think things through very carefully,” I tell my best friend and right-hand man. “I need to speak with my grandmother first.”

I don’t have aconsigliereper se, no one filling the shoes of aDon’s trusted, older advisor. I know of no man I want in this position, but my grandma, she has the wisdom and cunning required to help me out. I’ve been relying a lot on her since I took over from my father.

Mattia nods. “Can my father help?”

A flare of rage burns through me when I think of the bastard. Without him, we wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place. Bianca would’ve been free at Mattia’s wedding, we would’ve indulged in our tryst, she’d have gotten pregnant, I’d have married her, and our son would’ve been born in my arms, not across the world from me, a secret I might never have found out about. Not only this, but I would have denied my first-born his rightful place as my heir if I hadn’t known of his existence. I know what it means to be a Don’s first son, the one he trusts to take over from him one day. Enzo could’ve grown up not knowing of his heritage, of his own family’s legacy he’s to uphold.

But pragmatism settles in the wake of the burn, icing over it. I need all the allies I can get, and I know Mattia, the man he’s become in the past four years. I wouldn’t trust him with my life if I didn’t. He calls the shots in his family now, so if he’s suggesting the old man be roped in, it means he’s the one holding the reins, not the elder.

“We’ll discuss this later,” I say as I catch a glimpse of a fuchsia-pink caftan floating down the stairs.

Unbidden, I stand as Bianca reaches the first floor, the kid on her hip again.

Seeing him this time in the clear light of day, something inside my chest clenches. He looks so much like I do in my childhoodpictures. He has Bianca’s pointed chin, but otherwise, he’s a mini-me.

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