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I have always wanted a family and kids. My father may be a ruthless crime boss, but he’s also a family man. And my mother is the greatest mother on the planet. I don’t know how she handled us. Andy would come over and we would wreck the house and torment my sisters. My sisters were little hell-raisers in their own right.
Andy’s hand lands on my back. He gives my shoulder a reassuring squeeze and I lean into it, allowing him to ground me. I close my mouth, my jaw snapping back into place, and refocus my eyes on the center of the room. My father is staring at me, waiting for me to come back to the moment. He doesn’t want me to miss whatever Eric is going to tell us.
I nod my head at him, alerting him I am fully present in the moment. My emotions are something I can deal with later. I have enough experience to know how to lock them away when they’re inconvenient.
There’s a flash in my father’s eyes, and I realize it isn’t the Don in the room with us right now. It’s my father. The man who values family more than anything. The grandfather who has had his grandchild taken away from him, and that might be scarier than the Don.
“How old is the boy?” he asks Eric, his voice harsh.
“He just turned four in February,” Eric admits.
Chris doesn’t bother trying to deny that the child, my child, exists. Trying to claim that my father received bad intel would be a stupid move on his part. My father does nothing without a hundred percent certainty.
Four years old. I remember when Caterina, my youngest sister, was four. It was when she finally became nice. She had been a rough baby. Even I had to take shifts rocking her in the night so my parents could get some sleep. She was worse as a toddler. She was three years old before she slept through the night, and she still had a habit of crawling into my bed with me when she wanted to cuddle.
It pains me I don’t know these things about my son.
“Why were we never made aware of his existence?” my father continues his line of questioning. I can hear the words but barely process them.
“I found out she was pregnant when she got accused of stealing a pregnancy test. She didn’t have any way to contact Enzo or she would have. I didn’t know he was the father until she asked me a while later for his number so she could tell him.”
I grind my teeth together. That had been one of my father’s commands, to not give her my phone number. My one night with her was to be all I had until she got home from university. If I got into the habit of talking to her, texting her, or calling her on the phone, my patience would have thinned as my obsession grew. She wouldn’t have lasted her first semester.
She was young, five years younger than me. My father saw the look in my eye and knew every damn intention I had. I wanted her by my side. Giving her time to grow up was what my father had intended, not this.
Chris is no longer looking at my father. Instead, he’s looking directly at me. “She wanted to tell you, but I couldn’t let my daughter and grandbaby get pulled into this life. I don’t want either of them killed by one of your enemies,” Chris pleads with us to understand.
My father scoffs. “So you sent her out into the world unprotected? If I can figure out that Matteo is Enzo’s kid, so could any of our enemies. And now they are vulnerable without the protection of the Famiglia.”
My father’s voice rises with every word. He’s practically shouting by the time he’s done. Everyone in the room is on edge as we wait to see what he’ll do.
His fist connects with Eric’s jaw. The resounding crack echoes through the room. That’s hardly the worst thing my father has done in this room, and I realize he’s taking pity on the man. Not because it is one of his oldest friends. Friendship won’t earn compassion after betrayal, but because he’s Emma’s father.
Eric is family now, whether he wants to be or not.
My father motions towards one of my uncles to take over for him before signaling for me to meet him upstairs. I follow him wordlessly.
I don’t talk the entire way to the kitchen, where my father instructs the housekeeper to make us tea. I sit silently at the table, my head swimming with questions as my father throws some pictures on the table in front of us.
The little boy, Matteo, my son, looks just like me. I can see myself in his nose and his eyes, in his wild and unruly hair. I chuckle. When he gets to middle school, I’ll be able to help him learn how to control it better. My sisters always say I have more hair products than them, but their hair is far easier to control than mine has ever been.
“Chris has been pushing me for weeks to marry you to Nina Petrov, saying it would be a good way to solidify an alliance with them. He’s been more than pushy, putting whispers into the Russian’s ears we would plan a betrothal,” my father tells me as I stare at the pictures laid out in front of me. Matteo isn't the only one in them. There are quite a few of him with his mother.
Emma.
The day I set my eyes on her, she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Somehow, she's only grown into that beauty. She looks stronger, those long legs of hers becoming shapelier. She’s grown into her body, losing the last bits of awkward lankiness she had at the wedding.
My finger strokes over her face. “I hope you know there is no damn way I was ever marrying Nina, even if I didn’t have a child.”
My father chuckles. “I know son. I’ve known since Andy’s wedding. You nearly hijacked the priest for yourself. I hope you know you didn’t need to get her pregnant to avoid an arranged marriage.”
“If I had known she would end up pregnant, there would be no way in hell she would have ever left this property.”
It’s the one way I’m fortunate where the rest of my family was not. My cousins and sisters are all fair game to be married off in business dealings. It was the unfortunate curse of being born into a family like ours. Business comes before everything else. It has worked out for Andy. He and Bianca fight and fuck with the same intensity, and everyone else in the same household as them is subjected to the sounds of both. I have never seen my uncle so eager as he was to buy them their own place after living with them for the first three months of their marriage.
“Now I know why he was so eager to give you a Russian bride. He hoped if you were distracted with your new wife, you wouldn’t notice when Emma came home with a little boy who looks like you,” my father says, shaking his head. “He’s not supposed to be involved in dealings with the Petrov family. It’s why I became so suspicious of him.”
“It’s time to bring Emma and Matteo home,” I tell him, no uncertainty in my decision. I have missed far too much, and I’ll be damned if I miss another moment.
