Page 96 of Mafia Shade's Reluctant Bride
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
MARIA
Matteo is your son.
I didn’t even realize I had said it out loud until I heard the words echo back at me. My voice was shaky, barely above a whisper, but the weight of it landed with a thud in the middle of Lorenzo’s living room.
He stared at me like I had just grown wings or confessed to being a unicorn. His lips parted, and then closed, and then opened again.
“Matteo is my son?”
It wasn’t a question. Not really. His voice cracked in a way that made something in my chest twist. There was something unhinged in his eyes, not in a dangerous way, but in the way a man looks when he’s trying to hold back joy because he’s afraid it might not be real.
I nodded.
Everything was happening too fast. My head was spinning. One minute, I was admitting I was the mystery girl. The next, he was telling me he’d never stopped feeling something for me even when he didn’t know it was me, and now this? I believed he was not my dad’s killer, somewhere within me. I always knew Shade, the man I had spent that night with, wasn’t the killer. But now, more than ever, I was certain.
Matteo. Our son. His son.
“I always knew he was Shade’s son,” I breathed, my eyes locked with his. “From the moment I found out I was pregnant. But I didn’t know you were Shade. Not then.”
He took a step back like the air had just knocked him over. His hands ran over his face. Then he laughed. It wasn’t cold or mocking. It was joy, cracked open and messy.
“I can’t believe this. I can’t…Jesus. Matteo is my son.”
He kept repeating it like he was afraid it would vanish if he didn’t say it enough times.
He looked up again. I had seen that smile once, years ago, and it was burned into me like the afterimage of staring too long at the sun. He looked like a man who had just been given back the thing he thought he’d lost forever.
“I know I’ve missed so much of his life already,” he said, voice thick with something he couldn’t swallow down. “But I swear to you, Maria, the little time I’ve spent with him, I already love that boy. He’s smart, funny, and so full of questions. He’s everything I didn’t know I needed until I met him.”
My eyes burned.
He took a careful step toward me like he didn’t want to startle me. “I want to be there for him. I want to be his father. Not just in name. I want to show up for him every day if you’ll let me.”
I didn’t speak right away. My mouth opened and then shut. I wasn’t trying to torture him, but for a moment, I felt paralyzed.
He had always been so good with Matteo, even before he knew. Patient. Funny. That rare mix of charm and structure that kids actually respect.
I knew he would be a good father.
So, I nodded.
His eyes widened. Then, without hesitation, he closed the space between us and kissed me.
I didn’t even have time to brace for it. His hands cupped my face and pulled me in like I was the answer to a question he had been asking his whole life. And I kissed him back.
Oh, I kissed him like the world was ending, because for us, that was the end of the world we knew before now.
Years of confusion, pain, longing, and guilt all poured out of me in that kiss. His lips were warm and familiar, yet somehow new. His hand slid to the small of my back and pressed me against him like he was afraid I might slip away again.
And maybe I was. But not now.
Not tonight.
He pulled back just enough to speak against my lips.
“I love you.”
