Page 88 of Mafia King's Surprise Baby

To be a fly on the wall of that study right now. All these years ago, I left because staying here would’ve created a mess and started a war. The war came and went, but my return, it made a mess anyhow, and it seems it’s worse now, a veritable clusterfuck. I’d seen anger on Mattia’s face when he came in, and on Leo’s, it hadn’t been resolution as much as it had been fiery determination.

Knowing Leo, knowing he can kill someone and not need anyone else to do the dirty jobs—I don’t know yet how he got rid of Ardian, but everyone knows he’s behind that death—it’s not something pretty awaiting the syndicate. And those bastards, the old Dons, they’ll fight back, and they don’t hesitate to fight dirty. There’s no honor among them when their pride is piqued.

I groan, my hands coming up to cover my face. “Oh, God. What have I done?”

As my hands lower, I catch sight of Enzo in front of the TV. He’s singing along with Peppa. Usually, the sounds from this cartoon drive me bat-shit crazy, having been listening to them on a loop for years now, but today, it brings a soft balm to my heart. Enzo, he’s all that matters. What I wouldn’t give to keep him like this all his life—carefree, happy, safe. His only concern is if there’ll be broccoli in his food tonight, the issue then being how he’ll work his way out of having to eat anything green.

He’s an innocent, just like we all were at some point. But he’ll have to grow; I can’t stop that. He is his father’s heir, and one day, he’ll step in those very shoes Leo’s father vacated for him. My son is the next Don of the Pellegrini family, and none of us can escape that.

Leo knows what he’s doing. Asking me to leave it all to him, it means he’s going to take care of us. He’ll handle everything. There’s nothing else I can do but trust him now. After all, that’s what I wanted when I came back, for Leo to acknowledge his son, for him to keep his child safe. Me, I don’t matter in this picture. I never have, not since I saw that second line appear on the pregnancy test I took in this very house.

Resolve flowing through me, I inhale in deep and turn to Hana who has joined me in the kitchen.

“Let’s get started on dinner?” I ask.

The men are here, and they’ll need to be fed. Without another word, we fall into the steps involved in preparing some food. Hana cuts the greens and vegetables for a salad while I clean chicken breasts and baste them with chimichurri sauce before wrapping them in aluminum foil, placing the packets in the oven to cook.

The dryer in the laundry room beeps it’s finished a cycle. Hana fills a basket then nods at the rooms upstairs. Enzo’s cartoon is over, and before another can loop in, I wrangle him upstairs with me. He’s all too happy to settle on a bed with his collection of plastic dinosaurs while I give Hana a hand folding clothes.

“Leo’s got this,” she tells me with a smile.

I nod. We haven’t had much chance to talk lately, and this moment here harkens me back to our time in my apartment in Tokyo.

“How are things between you and Mattia?” I ask.

The smile dies on Hana’s face. I reach out and hug her with onearm.

“Do you want me to talk to him? It wasn’t your fault that he didn’t know I was still alive.”

She sniffles a bit. “It’s not that.”

“Then what is it?” I ask, softly squeezing her hand.

Hana takes a deep breath that somehow gets lodged in her nostrils, making her snort. “I…I don’t think I can have children.”

“What?” I blink at her. “How can you say this?”

She sighs, sounding exasperated. “It’s been four years, B. Four years of having unprotected sex. It had to have happened by now, don’t you think?”

I wince a little inside—I had sex once without protection and I got pregnant. I’m no authority on this topic.

Something inside Hana seems to deflate as she exhales.

“What is it?” I ask again. “You know you can tell me.”

She averts her face. “I don’t think Mattia wants children.”

“Come on, he loves children.”

“I thought so, too. Until I brought up adoption yesterday.”

“He’s against you adopting a child?” I ask, frowning.

“He said he can’t protect a child if it’s not blood,” she huffs.

As much I want to huff, too, I can see the sense behind this. Mattia and I, we grew up Mafia, wheresangreis everything.Hana won’t really get it, and that’s not a mark on her. You need to be inside this world to understand it. There’s a code about blood—it’s why I brought Enzo back, so his father would protect him, protect his bloodline. That child is off-limits to all the other families in our world because of it.

But no bloodline means the people involved are fair game. A child not born to a Mafia man is a ward, never a son or daughter. They’re not granted the same level of protection as blood.

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