“Yes, baby?”
“How come I don’t have a daddy?”
The question catches me off guard, and I feel my lips part. For a moment, I can’t speak.
Taking a deep breath, I smooth his hair back from his forehead. Dark hair like mine, not his father. “Remember what I told you? All families look different from other families, and that’s what makes each one special. We have Grandma and Auntie Rosa and your cousins. They’re our family. Aren’t we lucky?”
“But all my friends have daddies. My cousins have a daddy.”
“I know.” I pull him into a hug so he can’t see my face. “Your daddy and I knew each other when we were young, but sometimes grown-ups can’t be together even when they care about each other. It doesn’t mean he wouldn’t love you if he knew you.”
“He doesn’t know me?”
My throat feels thick with strong, painful emotions. Guilt that my son doesn’t know his father.
“It’s complicated, baby,” I say, my voice husky with tears. “Grown-up stuff.”
I smile and cup Leon’s face in my hands, trying to pretend that this isn’t the hardest conversation I’ve ever had with my son.
For a moment, an image rises unbidden in my mind. Cristiano in an armchair, wearing something soft and touchable. Leon curled against his broad chest, a picture book open between them. Two heads bent together, one golden, one dark. Two pairs of amber eyes following the words and gazing at the pictures. Cristiano’s deep voice, low and warm, the corner of his mouth tilted up in a smile, reciting the words in the beautifulway he used to quote lines of Shakespeare to me. Leon giggling. Safe. Happy.Loved.
Two handsome Montoni men, comfortable and cozy.
I crush the image before it can take root in my heart.
It wouldn’t be like that. Montoni men are monsters. Agnello Montoni beat his wife and his son, and Cristiano inherited his crime empire. He probably hurts people. Might even have killed people. Cristiano would raise Leon to be just like him and teach him that violence is power and power is everything.
The thought of Cristiano emotionally and physically crushing the goodness and light out of my son and turning my sweet boy into a killer is the most terrifying thing I’ve ever imagined.
My son is better off as a Santoro.
“But I have always wanted you,” I say, and my voice only trembles a little. “I wanted you so much from the very first second I knew you were on your way, my beautiful boy.”
It’s a little white lie, but not so far from the truth. Seven weeks after I’d lost my virginity to Cristiano and left the Montoni mansion for good, I realized I’d missed two periods. I sobbed on the bathroom floor clutching the pregnancy test, unable to believe what I was seeing.
I’d never felt more alone in my life, and then I’d never felt more afraid. I knew from Mom that Cristiano was long gone, thousands of miles away in Italy. I thought for a while about contacting Cristiano to tell him I was pregnant, but Mom and Rosa closed ranks around me, reminding me that I was afraid of Cristiano. That I couldn’t trust him. The Montonis wouldn’t be interested in a bastard child and wouldn’t give me any financial help. Mom and Rosa would help me raise my child, if it was my decision to keep it.
It was a scary decision, the hardest I ever made in my life, but I wanted my baby. And when I first held my son in my arms, I understood what love is for the first time in my life.
Unconditional.
Selfless.
Not the cruel possession that Cristiano offers.
“You’ve always been loved. By me. By Auntie Rosa. And by Grandma.”
Leon considers this with the solemnity of a four-year-old. “Okay, Mama.”
And just like that, he’s done with the conversation, wriggling out of my arms and down from the counter to grab his backpack. But I stay standing in front of the mirror for a moment longer, trying to pull myself together. Reminding myself that I can do this, no matter how hard it is. I will do this.
For Leon.
I emerge from the bathroom, and call out, “Time to go to Auntie Rosa’s.”
“Yay!” Leon comes barreling out of his room, backpack bouncing against his shoulders, stuffed dinosaur clutched in one hand. “Is Mason gonna be there?”
I ruffle his hair as we head for the door. “Of course he is. He lives there, silly.”
