He’s been telling me that for days. And he’s right—the birth was brutal, but the moment they put Daniele on my chest, everything shifted. Everything made sense.
My Daniele. My little sunbeam. My whole universe in seven pounds.
He whimpers, his tiny face scrunching like he’s threatening to cry.
“No, it’s okay, baby,” I soothe him. I look up at Matteo. “I could stay like this forever. Just watching him. Thank you, my love.”
Matteo’s hand settles at the small of my back. “Why thank me?”
I look around the room—the crib, the warmth of the walls, the life we somehow built—then back at him.
“When I came into your life, I was falling apart. I’d lost my freedom, my safety, everything that made me feel like myself. I thought I’d spend the rest of my life running from a world I barely escaped.”
My throat tightens. I swallow hard and keep going.
“But then you… you stitched me back together. You took on burdens that never should have been yours. You chose me. You built this home. You showed me that life doesn’t end when everything falls apart; it can start again.”
The tears slip before I can stop them.
Matteo leans in, kissing my temple. His voice drops to something low and certain. “Amore, you don’t need to thank me. Loving you isn’t a choice—it’s fate. We were always going to find each other. This lifetime, the next… all of them. Our beginning wasn’t traditional, no. But when I look at you and our son?” He touches Daniele’s back gently. “I see my entire world.”
My chest tightens—not from fear, but from a kind of fullness that feels almost too big to hold.
“I love you, Matteo Davacalli.”
His eyes soften, steady and sure. “And I love you, Beatrice Davacalli. In this life and the next.”
23
MATTEO
Eight years later…
Time is a strange creature. It devours years in silence while you’re busy fighting, defending, surviving—head down, teeth bared, convinced that the only direction is forward. That’s the life I chose, the life that shaped me, but I would bleed for it again without hesitation, because every brutal turn of it brought me to her.
“So I can’t get a girlfriend yet?” Daniele’s voice rises from the back seat, full of innocence and misplaced confidence.
My wife twists in her seat with a frown. “Danny, you’re eight. You don’t need a girlfriend.”
I watch him through the rearview mirror as the Faravelli gates draw nearer.
“But Uncle Valerio says you need to start young.”
Beatrice gasps. “He said what?”
A low chuckle slips out of me. Of course Valerio would decide my son needed Casanova lessons before mastering basic arithmetic.
“Danny, what did we say about listening to Uncle Valerio?” He meets my eyes in the mirror, looks away, then looks back, guilt and mischief tangled together.
“Daniele?”
He sighs dramatically and crosses his arms. “Only when it’s life or death.”
“Exactly.” I nod, then glance at my wife. Her expression is pinched, her lips pressed tight, her worry etched deeper than she realizes. “Come, bella,” I murmur, reaching for her hand. “It’s all in good fun.”
She blows out a breath, pushing her bangs from her eyes, trying to hide the tremor in her exhale. “I know. It’s just… he’s growing so fast. And now he’s asking questions—big boy questions.”
Her lashes flutter, trying to cage tears that have lived too close to the surface these past months. Her body has been through hell, and I can’t touch the pain that lives beneath her skin. I can only stand guard, helpless to anything but the world outside.
