Page 80 of Modern Romance September 2026 Books 5-8

“Well, then I’m sure you will find this a satisfying experience. My chef is very accomplished.”

“Oh, I know. Lunch was delicious.”

“I’m quite certain that you would’ve rather used my bones to pick your teeth clean in the end.”

“You aren’t wrong.” She looks at me, and there’s something overly assessing in her gaze. “Do you know, I don’t even know your name.”

I lift a brow. It’s been a very long time since I’ve had to introduce myself. My name precedes me. “Ciro Corretti.”

“Ciro,” she says, as if she’s testing it. “Corretti.”

“Say that in Rome, and you will most definitely get a response.”

“I watched the way that people reacted in the apartment complex when you were carrying me away. So I did gather that information for myself.”

“Information is power.”

Her eyes go sharp then. “I know.”

The dinner is an exquisite pasta, and she does take a break from her interrogation to start eating. “I’ve been thinking,” she says.

“Yes?”

“What if we did sort of a witness-protection thing? With the baby. What if I give birth, and neither of us puts our names on the birth certificate? We give the child up for adoption.”

Given the visceral response that I’ve just had to seeing her pregnant with my baby, her suggestion feels like an assault. I didn’t realize how much I wanted to be a father. And God, it makes no sense. My life is not conducive to raising a child, but if I can meet my ends, if I can finally rid the world of all of the poison that my father has injected into it, then I could be the father that this child needs. I know that I can keep them safe. As I have kept myself safe all these years. But it is not a life that I wish for anyone. I want to change things. For now and forever. And I have never felt greater motivation to do it.

“No,” I say.

“But…you don’t want the baby.”

“I do,” I say.

“Why? You live in a compound. You’re having to stash me away to keep from getting killed. How are you possibly going to take care of a baby? How are you going to make this happen? That is a very real question that I have for you. Because the dreadful reality is that I know what it’s like to be raised by two people who shouldn’t have had children.”

“You do not have to keep the child. In fact, I am determined to honor the original terms of the surrogacy agreement.”

“But I didn’t agree to give my baby to a mobster. To a single father who’s in danger of being assassinated at any moment. I didn’t agree to that.”

“But you will get paid. What does the rest of it matter to you?”

“It matters because I’m not dead inside.”

“You took payment for your own child.”

“I didn’t mean for it to be my own child. I was rushed through the process, then manipulated at the last moment.”

“And you want me to believe that you are an exceptionally brilliant woman, one who has spent all your life protecting yourself, but then you also want to play the part of vulnerable victim? One who had no chance or choice there in the last minute but to contribute their own genetic material to the baby.”

“I didn’t think I would care,” she says, conviction tugging at the words. “I didn’t think I would care. I’ve never wanted children. There’s never been any room in my life to even consider that. And so I thought what does it matter, as long as I’m giving the baby to parents who will love it? Giving it a better life than I had, and I thought maybe there was even something poetic about that. About making a child and giving it a chance that I never had. But that isn’t true. And I hate that.”

“You can hate it all you want, but it is reality. And I am not a man who shares. The fact remains, even though your agreement with my father wasn’t all that honest, it is still an agreement made.”

“And you can’t do anything legally. I mean, not when all of this was coercive.”

“I can offer you more money.”

She looks like I’ve slapped her down suitably. There’s something possessive in me. Something growling and feral that wants to stake a claim on her. Wants to tell her that she can remain with me as the mother of the child, as long as she surrenders her body to me.