I close my eyes.
I don’t bother confirming it. Saying it out loud feels like I’m speaking the words into existence. Keeping it quiet means I can deny it just a bit longer. Years I’ve spent wondering—worrying—about Elena. About where she went and whether or not she was even alive. All of that dread, all that obsession… only to find her holed up in some miserable apartment in New York scraping by with barely enough food in the pantry and my damn child on her hip.
“So?” he prompts when I don’t answer.
I laugh once, dull and humorless. “So, what?”
“Are you even sure he’s yours?”
A boy with my eyes. With my bone structure. With that same too-serious expression I’ve worn my entire life. None of that is coincidence, no matter how badly Elena wants it to be. She can lie to me but not about this, not when I know her the way I do, which is better than anyone.
She wouldn’t have slept with Matteo. Not when she had me. She never loved him, not the way she loved me. Their engagement was a necessity for politics, obligation born into a union and arranged by our families who believed alliances mattered more than true desire. Ironically, it all went up in flames the second her father decided my family was worth more to him dead than allied.
“Dante,” Leo says again.
I sigh.
“Yes. But I don’t have official proof,” I admit. The word tastes bitter in my mouth. “That’s the problem.”
He exhales slowly, uncrossing his arms to run a hand over the back of his neck. “Then drinking yourself into a stupor isn’t going to help you figure out how to get it.”
I turn my head and meet his gaze. “Perhaps there is a reason I am stalling. Did you ever think of that?”
If the boy is mine, my fury will be justified. She took something from me that I can never get back. First steps, first words, the beginning of a childhood I was never allowed to witness.
And if he isn’t? Then my rage has nowhere to go but inward or straight back to her because the alternative means she took my brother to her bed, betraying what we had. Or worse, some other nameless, faceless man I’d rather kill than reunite them with.
Either way, something irreparable is about to be exposed and I don’t know if I can handle it.
Leo studies me for a long moment, his expression unreadable. Then without asking, he reaches out and takes the bottle from my hand. He moves around the couch and sets it on the table just out of reach.
“For better or worse, you’re already past that point,” he says.
I don’t argue. There isn’t a point to it.
“Then what do you suggest?” I ask, my voice stripped of its usual bravado.
Leo shrugs, straightening as he turns back to face me. The movement is casual, but his eyes are anything but. “Get ahead of it before anyone else finds out.”
I frown, but he continues.
“Word will eventually travel. You can lock gossip down inside these walls for now, but it won’t stay contained. Someone will notice she’s back in Sicily and with a child. When they do, they will try everything to use it against you. And when it is confirmed the child is yours? Our enemies will do whatever they can to take him.”
My hands tighten into fists in my lap.
I hadn’t thought about it. Not properly, at least. Maybe the idea had brushed the edges of my thoughts, buried under the angerand alcohol and the shock of seeing her again, but I hadn’t followed it to its inevitable conclusion.
Leo is right. He always is.
Elena’s return won’t stay secret. It will move quietly at first with whispers among staff, questions among the lower ranks. Then it will slip into conversations with our contacts, our allies. From there, it will make its way into the hands of our enemies, presented like a loaded weapon on a silver platter.
They’ll dissect every detail. Why she ran, why she came back, why she has a child that looks suspiciously like me. And once they connect the dots and realize how deeply personal this is for me, they’ll use it to destabilize me and fracture my already shaky syndicate and finish what was started four years ago.
I can’t let that happen. Not after the three years I’ve spent dragging the Cosenza name back from the brink of extinction. Every debt repaid in blood, every alliance reforged through sheer force of will, will have all been for nothing if I let that happen. The thought of it all unraveling because of her and this child makes my jaw clench until it aches.
But what’s the alternative? Keep Elena and her son locked inside the villa for the rest of their lives? The idea flashes through my mind, dark and tempting. I could protect them that way. Control the variables, eliminate the risk.
Except it isn’t realistic.
