The moment his grip loosens, the boy scrambles forward, arms outstretched as his small body moves on pure instinct to run toward his mother.
“Mama!”
Elena drops to her knees instantly, her legs giving out the second she sees him free.
Her arms open wide and he collides into her, burying himself against her chest with a sob.
She wraps him up immediately, crushing him to her, one hand cradling the back of his head with the other wrapped tightly around his small back.
“It’s okay,” she murmurs against his hair. “It’s okay. I’ve got you. Mama’s here.”
She repeats it over and over.
The sight twists something deep and violent inside me the longer I stare at them.
I tell myself it’s anger.
Resentment, even… or disgust.
But deep down, I know it’s none of those things.
For one fleeting, treacherous second, I am no longer Don Cosenza. I am not the man many men fear.
I am not the ruler of an empire seven generations in the making.
Instead, I am a man standing in the shadows of his own childhood, staring at a continuation that should not exist.
The boy’s small chin lifts as he cries, trembling against Elena’s collarbone.
His brows are set in that same too-serious line I had at that age.
His hair curls faintly at the ends where it falls into his eyes, and Elena pushes it back with shaking fingers. The shape of his mouth when he inhales sharply between sobs is so familiar, it makes my vision shake.
Every detail mirrors the baby portraits once displayed in my family’s ancestral home. Portraits my mother loved.
My pulse roars in my ears.
She wouldn’t…
“Elena,” I grit through my teeth. “Who is his father?”
She stills completely like an animal sensing a predator is nearby. When she lifts her head to look at me, her eyes are filled with tears that haven’t yet fallen.
Her hand cups the back of the boy’s head protectively, pressing him closer to her chest.
“Who?” I snap.
She draws in a slow, shaking breath. “Matteo.”
I nearly flinch at the sound of my brother’s name rolling off her tongue.
That’s impossible. It has to be.
I remember Matteo as clearly as if he were standing right beside me. His fair hair had always been light as summer wheat, his deep blue eyes that were always too soft, always earnest and kind in ways I never was.
I remember the photographs of him at that age running through the villa halls, laughing over his shoulder as our mother chased him, breathless and smiling with a camera in her hand to capture it.
This boy looksnothinglike him.
