Gabriel turns me to face him, and his hands are shaking as they cup my face, his thumbs brushing away the tears on my cheeks. "You are having our baby," he says, and there is something rawand vulnerable in his expression that I have never seen before. "God, Rosalina. You are pregnant with our child."
"Our child," I repeat, and the words settle into my chest warm and right. "Yes."
He kisses me then—softer than Dante, slower than Luca, but no less intense. I can taste salt and realize he is crying too, silent tears tracking down his face as he holds me like I am the most precious thing in the world.
"I love you," he murmurs against my lips. "I love you so much, Bella. Both of you."
"I love you too," I whisper back, and then Dante is there again, pulling me against his chest from behind, his arms coming around my waist with hands that settle protectively over my still-flat stomach.
"We are having a baby," Dante says into my hair, and his voice breaks on the words. "An actual baby. Our family."
"Doesn’t matter whose it is biologically," Gabriel adds firmly, and Luca nods emphatically in agreement. "This baby is ours. All of ours. We are in this together."
"All of us," Luca confirms, his hand joining Dante's and Gabriel's on my stomach. "You, this baby, and three incredibly devoted fathers who are going to spoil both of you absolutely rotten."
The word fathers settles over me, and I realize that is exactly right. This baby will have three fathers, three men who already love it fiercely despite it being barely more than a cluster of cells. Three men who will protect it and nurture it and teach it and raise it together.
Our family.
22
DANTE
I am goingto be a father.
The thought keeps circling through my head, over and over, like a record stuck on repeat. A father. Me. Dante Salvatore, the man my own father claims is too soft, too emotional, too much like my mother—I am going to have a child.
Rosalina is pregnant.
With my baby. Or Gabriel's. Or Luca's.
And the remarkable thing—the thing that surprises me most as I stand here in the foyer with my arms around her, feeling her heartbeat against my chest—is that I do not care whose it is biologically.
It does not matter.
This baby is mine. Ours. The four of us are in this together, and whoever contributed the actual DNA is irrelevant compared to the fact that Rosalina is carrying our child. A baby we will raise together. A family we are building.
My family.
Not my father's family with its hierarchies and rules and endless demands for perfection. Not the Salvatore legacy with its weight of expectations and disappointment. Just—us. Rosalina and Gabriel and Luca and me, and now a baby who will be loved by all of us.
The joy is so fierce it almost hurts, settling in my chest like something bright and warm and unfamiliar. I have spent so much of my life chasing approval, trying to prove myself worthy, fighting to earn my place. But this—this baby does not need me to prove anything. Will not care that my father thinks I am weak or that the family questions my leadership.
This baby will just need me to be its father.
And I can do that. I will do that. I will be the kind of father Seamus was to Rosalina—present and loving and supportive. The kind my own father never was to me.
"We need to start planning," Luca is saying, his hand still resting on Rosalina's stomach with reverent care. "The nursery, baby clothes, finding the best pediatrician in Manhattan?—"
"Luca, she just found out she is pregnant," Gabriel says, but he is smiling, that rare genuine expression that transforms his whole face. "We have time."
"Time goes fast," Luca insists. "Nine months is nothing. We need to?—"
"Wait."
Rosalina's voice cuts through our planning, and something in her tone makes all three of us go still. She has pulled back slightly from our embrace, and when I look at her face I see thejoy from moments ago fading, replaced by something that looks uncomfortably like guilt.
"Flower?" I say carefully, my hand finding her face, thumb brushing her cheekbone. "What is wrong?"
