Chapter 20
Leo
Bianca is breaking our kiss. I don’t want to let her go—I won’t ever let her go now that she’s back, now I’ve found her again. In my arms, with me, close to me, that’s where she belongs.
I pull her in tighter, but it seems I didn’t count on her strength as she forcefully extracts herself from my arms and stands next to the couch. A thought strikes me, making me sit upright.
Was I forcing myself on her?
“Bianca, I’m sorry,” I say. “This is too fast, too soon for you. I get it—”
Her finger on my lips makes me stop, and my hand comes up to clench hers where it lays upon my chin.
“Too fast?” I mumble again.
She shakes her head.
I don’t get it, though. Why did she break away? Elation like I’ve never felt before was coursing through me less than a minute ago. Because I had her with me again. She’s alive. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the moment my eyes landed on her as she stood there at the foot of the stairs. She’s done something to her hair, and her face looks wearier, much more mature, but I knew it was her, all right. My soul, it felt the same connection that raged through me inside that bridal suite where she became mine in body, when we soared together in ecstasy.
But now, she’s moved away, and she’s hoisting me upright with her hand pulling on mine.
“What is it?” I ask, standing up.
“There’s…something you need to know, that you need to see,” she says as she starts out of the living room.
“What?” It’s a question as much as it’s expressing my confusion.
She stops and turns to me, my hand still in hers.
“No more secrets, Leo. It seems to me you want me back—”
“I do,” I rush to reassure her.
“To have a future, we need to put the past to rest. I need to show you something.”
Her tone sounds ominous, and I stay silent as I let her lead me to the second floor. She pushes the door of the guest room opening on the landing gently, confers with someone inside. Mattia comes out, and my best friend’s eyes meet mine. He gives me a small smile and pats my shoulder as he brushes past, then Bianca’s tugging on my hand again. She motions for me to stay quiet, then she pulls me into the bedroom.
The first thing I notice is the amber night light throwing patterns of stars languidly on the walls. My gaze then drops to the bed, and when I register what’s on it, my lungs seize for a second as my body freezes.
There, with a soft blanket on his gangly legs, sleeps a little boy with a mop of thick, unruly dark hair. He’s clutching a plush toy to his side. While I’m staring at him, speechless, he flips onto his back, a few dark locks falling on his narrow forehead. He’s got rounded cheeks, and that little mouth, I’ve seen its shape on my brothers’ faces, on my own in the mirror.
He murmurs something; it sounds like Maman . Bianca drops my hand to go to him. With a soft touch, she brushes his hair back then places a kiss on his forehead, mumbling something to him in French, it sounds like.
That boy, it’s her son. And mine. That’s my child.
She must have been pregnant when she disappeared. And that’s probably the reason why she faked her death. No one condones children being born out of wedlock in our community. Now add to it that she was betrothed to another man, the shame it would’ve brought if she’d gone to that marriage bed not only not a virgin, but carrying another man’s child? They would’ve killed her, and the Mafia might even have agreed it’s the only way to wash their honor clean.
Bianca would’ve been dead…as would’ve been my son.
I’m not a man given to expansive displays of emotion usually. As much as I’m yearning to run my finger on the chubby cheek of this little boy, take his hand in mine, push his hair back, hold him in my arms, carry him around on my hip with his arms around my neck, I can contain it all. But the lone tear that slips down my cheek? I can’t keep it in. I have a son, with Bianca, and all this time, she’s kept him safe.
I don’t know how long I stand there staring at this sleeping child. Bianca doesn’t rush me, and when I finally tear my gaze from the boy and look at her, she gives me a small, pained smile.
I frown. Is she worried I’m angry? That I’m going to berate her for keeping this secret from me?
I don’t want to leave, but I know I have to reassure her, and I don’t want to wake the kid as this is a conversation we can’t keep hushed in this dark room.
So I take her hand and lead her out. On the landing, I stop.
“Thank you,” I tell her.
She blinks, as if confused.
“For keeping him safe,” I add.
She nods at me. As we start onto the stairs, Mattia slips back into the room. Of course, this child is in a strange house—there should be someone he knows there when he wakes up.
This makes me think. “Mattia knew?”
We’ve made it back to the living area now, and Bianca takes a seat on the couch, motioning at me to sit down next to her.
“No. He wouldn’t keep this secret from you,” she says.
I’m reassured somewhat. Though I know I wouldn’t fault my best friend if he had kept this information from me, because it kept my child safe. It’s easy to make a woman lose her unborn baby, the whole thing written off and brushed under the rug. It’s another thing to kill a living child, the one rule our kind, even across mobs, respects. Even the Albanians wouldn’t stoop so low. Bianca had to go away at least until our child was born.
“But Hana knew,” I say, the information slotting into my mind like pieces of a puzzle I didn’t know made a whole until a few moments ago.
Bianca nods.
Something she said upstairs flashes into my mind. She spoke French. And Hana knowing this…
“Was he born in February, at thirty-one weeks?” I ask.
Bianca frowns. “How do you know this?”
The breath leaves my airways for a moment. “You’re the one Hana went to see that day. She called you Beatrice.”
She gulps, then nods. “Bérénice, actually. It was my cover.”
“So all this time, you were in Japan?”
“Yes.”
Something else flitters in. “With Hana’s brother. Hiro.”
“Yes.”
A surge of red-hot rage flares the embers of jealousy inside my chest. “You were with him?”
“We lived with him, yes, but he and I were never together.”
I can’t help my rapid exhale.
“He kept us safe, though,” she adds.
“He is Yakuza, isn’t he?”
“Yes. He’s protected us all this time. He’d vowed he’d continue for as long as we needed him, even when he got married and had his own children. He’ll have to soon, we both knew it.”
“But you didn’t want to put such a burden on him?” I venture to ask. “Is that why you came back?”
“Somewhat.” Bianca peers up at me. “I came back because Enzo is your heir.”
My heir. I have an heir. I have a son. “Enzo… That’s a beautiful name.”
She smiles. “It’s short for Lorenzo, actually.” She sighs. “I wanted him to have your name, but I couldn’t do that, as it would’ve given us away then. Our cover name was Picard, and as Lorenzo Picard, at least he had the same initials as you.”
My throat clogs for a moment. So she has been thinking about me all this time, too. And she’s always had a reminder of our relationship with her. Not just memories, like I had, but a living, breathing, beautiful mix of both of us.
“You’re not angry at me, are you?” she asks, voice small as she stares at me with big eyes.
“Never,” I growl, my voice barely making it out past the lump in my throat. I reach up to clasp her face between my palms, and I drop a light kiss on her forehead, then on her lips, before peering down into her eyes. “This, you coming back and with him, it’s the best gift I could’ve received.”
A close second would be to have my father alive again, but that, I can’t make happen. I held his lifeless body in my arms, I buried him in the family crypt. He’s not coming back.
My father would’ve been a grandfather today. And me? I’m a father now.
“I know the other Dons are putting pressure on you,” Bianca says, tearing me from my melancholy thoughts.
A harsh chuckle flows out. “You don’t know the half of it.”
She also laughs without humor. “Oh, trust me, I know how it feels. I was their sacrificial lamb, remember?”
My jaw clenches when I think of this. They’re putting so much pressure on me, and I’m a grown man who can hold his own. She was a vulnerable twenty-three-year-old girl. How, ever, could she have fought back? They all but sold her to those fucking Albanians with the empty promise of peace. During the war, we all saw how greedy those bloodsuckers really are. The marriage into one of their clans would’ve held a tenuous peace, at best, if they didn’t outright start gunning for us since they were already ‘in’ having married into one of our families.
“They’re not taking you from me,” I grit out.
“It’s Enzo I’m worried about,” she tells me.
“No one’s coming close to him, either.”
“Thank you,” she exhales. “For keeping him safe.”
My chest clenches. Doesn’t she know I’ll scorch the earth for her, that I’ll bring the moon and stars down if necessary, that I’ll dance with the devil and take on God Himself if it means she’s safe, with me, and this also applies to our son, our family?
I wrap my arms around her and pull her to me. When she comes willingly, I sigh against her hair and press a soft kiss onto her head.
“There’s something I have that might help you,” she says.
“You’ve already given me enough,” I reply.
She gave me an heir. I was joking with my grandmother just yesterday telling her I need to pull a child from a magician’s hat to get those old goats to ease up on me, and look where we are now, a child seemingly pulled out of a magic hat landing in my life as if by a snap of fingers.
Enzo, he’s a game changer.
“Thank you for protecting our boy, Bianca.”
“He’s everything.”
“You both are.”
We stay like this for a long moment. The contentment in these minutes washes over me like a balm. I always knew Bianca was the center of my world, my anchor. It all kicked in when I saw the grown woman she’d become, but this germinated from a seed of fondness planted inside me from a long time ago, possibly from that night I met with her on that pier. She was underage then, so nothing happened, but something inside me was simply waiting for her, for the moment she’d step back into my life again. Then, boom! I was fully and unequivocally a goner.
Losing her all these years ago, it made me spiral in a downward descent. I’d lost my cornerstone, and then my father left us the way he did. Not his death, but the dementia diagnosis, that’s what took him from us. I lost my rock with him, and since then, I’d been drowning, slowly suffocating, unable to come up for air long enough to do more than just survive.
Having her here now, it’s like the hand that was keeping my head underwater has lost all its force. I can surge up, break the surface, gulp in enough oxygen to fill my lungs and clear my head.
“Leo?”
“Hmm?”
“I’m sorry about your dad. He was a good man.”
I sigh. “The best.”
“All this happened because of me.”
I don’t like how small her voice has gotten. I pull away, cupping the back of her head to make her look up at me.
“It wasn’t your fault. None of this was.”
“The war. It happened because I left.”
“It happened because those damn fuckers we call our leaders were pussies looking for an easy way out.” I won’t let her believe this is on her. “Instead of fighting like men, they chose to pressure an innocent girl into an alliance. They were already looking for a replacement for you within a few weeks.”
Bianca sits up straighter and lowers her head. “But you killed Ardian. An eye for an eye, that’s what it was.”
It’s like acid is burning my gut as the secret my father told me not to divulge to anyone sits inside me and I choose to honor my word. What I wouldn’t give to be able to tell Bianca this. But I made a promise to a dying man, and I will respect that.
“His death meant something,” I tell her, using his own words. “It brought us peace.”
“Which I can upset by being back,” she says, biting her lower lip.
“The treaty has been signed. No one can go back on this now.”
“But the syndicate can put pressure on you,” she adds.
My whole body tenses with rage and contempt for our organization’s leadership. “You leave the syndicate to me.”
I have an heir now, and I don’t know how that changed me, but I feel powerful now. Unstoppable. I live on inside that boy, and this, no one will ever be able to take away from me. I’ll protect this child of mine with all I’ve got.
“Leo?”
“Yes?”
Bianca blinks softly. “What about us?”
I frown. “What about it?”
What is there to discuss? She’s here, we have a son, we belong together. Her body wasn’t lying in the way it responded to me earlier. She told me she loves me, that she has loved me all along. I love her, too.
She bites her lip again. “My father and Mattia. We have their blessing to be together, in case you’re wondering.”
“You think I ever needed anyone’s blessing to be with you?”
I said this not in a menacing way but with some lightness thrown in. She must know what she means to me.
“No,” she replies.
“Then what?”
As I watch her sitting there in silence, a thought strikes me. I’m thinking of myself in all this, but what about her? She admitted she came back only because my son needs my protection now. She never spoke of herself in there.
Trepidation starts beating an erratic drums’ beat with my heart. But I have to ask this.
“What is it you want, Bianca?”
She shrugs, which doesn’t give me much of an answer. Or does it? Insight is flowing into me, and though I am loath to face it, I know I must look at everything squarely in the eye.
Bianca only came back to protect her child. She left because she was thinking of him. All this time, she’s been thinking like a mother. That little boy, Enzo, he’s ours. He’s my son; I’m his father. With this title comes a host of responsibility I wasn’t looking at clearly. Now, I do, and all I see is this innocent, defenseless, clueless child sleeping upstairs who has no idea the only world he’s ever known has just been upended and things will never be the same again.
It dawns on me then—me and Bianca, we can’t jump into anything right now. We have our son to consider, and he’s paramount in all this. Not us. Never us anymore.
I pull away from her, staring into her face, searching her features for her reaction to what I know I have to say.
“I think we need to take some time. All this…it’s a lot.”