I pull Amauri into my arms, pressing my face into his hair, breathing him in until my hands stop shaking.
"It's okay," I murmur. "I promise. I'm okay. Massimo didn't make me cry."
He doesn't fully relax, but he leans into me, one arm still angled outward like he's ready to fight if he has to. Massimo watches us, really watches this time. Not as a don. Not as a man reclaiming territory. But as a father. I watch the realization hit him with brutal clarity: his son learned how to protectmelong before anyone taught him how to protect himself.
"I'm sorry," Massimo says again, and this time the words are for both of us. Amauri studies him, weighing something far too heavy for a child to carry.
"It wasn't Massimo's fault," I kiss Amauri's forehead. "Mummy just remembered something painful from the past, and Massimo tried to make me feel better."
Amauri's eyes search my face with an intensity that makes my breath hitch. It's uncanny. The focus. The weighing of truth. It's the same look Massimo wore earlier, measuring, deciding, unafraid of what he might find. Goosebumps rise along my arms.
"Is that true?" Amauri asks quietly, looking from me to Massimo.
The room holds its breath. Massimo doesn't hesitate. He crosses himself, solemnly, old-world, deadly sincere. "The whole truth," he says. "I swear."
Amauri studies us both again, deep in thought, like a tiny judge presiding over something far bigger than pancakes and cartoons. For a long second, I don't dare move. Then he nods. Satisfied.
He lets go of me, and the tension drains out of his small body as quickly as it came. His gaze shifts past us; his eyes light up. "Are those pancakes?"
And just like that, the world exhales.
My head is still reeling.It's not what she said; I already knew the facts. I'd reconstructed them piece by piece, stripped them down to bones, timelines, and lies. That part I could handle.
What I wasn't prepared for washow much she'd carried alone. Ten years of grief that she never let show. Ten years of believing I betrayed her. That Ileft. Walked away. Chosen absence over her and the child growing inside her.
The thought hits like a blunt instrument. She thought I fucking abandoned her. The realization sits in my chest, heavy and corrosive. Not guilt, something worse. Loss compounded by misunderstanding. A wound that never had the chance to scab because it was never seen.
And then there's Amauri.
The kid just clawed his way back from hell. Kidnapped. Imprisoned. Watched men with guns decide his fate. And what does he do the moment he hears his mother cry? He shields her. No hesitation. No calculation. Just instinct. That bond between them is ferocious. Built in the dark. Forged by fear and love and survival. It's something to be envious of. Something that sparks jealousy, low and sharp in my gut. And something I admire the hell out of.
I force my breathing to steady. Clamp down on everything in me that wants to pull Jenna back into my arms, that wants to rage at the world for taking ten years I'll never get back.
For him, I stay calm.
"Yes," I say evenly, keeping my voice light, grounding. "Those are pancakes. And waffles."
Amauri's eyes go so wide I think they might actually fall out of his head.
"Both?" he asks, reverently.
I nod once. "Do you like those?"
His head bobs up and down so eagerly, and his eyes are so huge, it does something to my chest that I refuse to name.
"Go ahead," I tell him. "Have some."
That's all the permission he needs.
He attacks the food like a starving animal, climbing halfway onto the chair, shoveling pancakes onto his plate with zero concern for dignity or syrup distribution. It's chaotic. It's loud. It's… life.
I look up and catch Jenna watching him. She's wiping at her eyes, smiling through tears, pride radiating off her like heat. Fierce. Exhausted. Unbroken. A deep, primal part inside merecognizes her. This is still her. After ten years. After the betrayal she believed to be real. After fear, and sacrifice, and surviving men who should never have touched her life, she's still the same woman who loves without half-measures. I feel it. Not a snap. Not a return. Aclick. Like something long dislocated sliding back into place. And instead of fighting it—instead of resenting the vulnerability—I let it settle.
There are still bills to call due. Kingsley, for one. For what he did to his daughter. For the choices he forced on her when she was barely more than a girl. That debt hasn't even begun to accrue interest yet.
Mexico still waits. Enemies still breathe. Blood will still be spilled. But for this moment—this fragile, impossible morning—I watch my son eat pancakes like the world never tried to break him. I stand in my kitchen with the woman who shouldhave been here all along. Whatever was taken from us is being reclaimed. Slowly. Brutally. And this time I'm not letting it go.
Breakfast settles into something almost normal. Plates clink softly. Syrup drips. Amauri's chewing is enthusiastic, messy, and unapologetic. The chaos of earlier fades into a hum, replaced by coffee, sunlight, and the sound of a child eating like he hasn't eaten in days.
