Modern Romance December 2025 #5-8

Chapter One

Renzo DiCarlo sat fuming in his tinted Maserati, watching the different occupants of the house—women of varying ages—come back from work, dates, or whatever else they got up to at the end of the day.

The two-story Victorian home, located in a village near London, wasn’t where he had expected his quarry to be.

The house was sturdy and beautiful, with a redbrick facade and elegant wrought iron railings that led to a deep blue front door. Even in the waning light, he could see the vibrant garden full of flowers and neatly trimmed shrubs.

At least she had chosen a quiet little village, relatively safe, instead of a city like London or New York. He should be thankful for small mercies, Renzo supposed.

Given the excited chatter the PI he had hired to locate her had spewed about the local folklore being rich in history, he shouldn’t be surprised.

Mimi Shah had always been bookish, standoffish, and more interested in documenting other people’s lives. Also utterly uninterested in the public life that her world-renowned actress mother constantly courted.

That she would prefer to share a home with a bunch of working women, instead of choosing to tell his family about the child she was carrying, grated on him.

But then, everything about Mimi Shah had always grated on Renzo. Even though, in theory, she was the exact opposite of her stepsister, Pia, his sister-in-law of six years. The intensity of his own reaction to Mimi had never made sense to Renzo.

Just then, a pregnant woman stepped out of a beat-up car that had rounded the small courtyard in front of the home.

Her gait was off-balance as she bent to gather her bags, smile strained as she thanked the driver.

Renzo gripped the steering wheel tight as he watched her make her way towards the worn steps to the main door. With a hand bracing over her lower back, a cloth grocery bag in one hand, and her usual black backpack hitched on her shoulder, she took a deep breath and started the upward trek.

The way he was parked, he could see her body sketched carefully by the fading light. As if just for his benefit.

His jaw tightened.

She was slender to the point of gauntness, so her belly looked even more protruding on her thin frame. But it was her face that held his attention. All sharp angles and serious eyes, as if her stubborn nature had etched itself into her features.

Compared to her stepsister, Pia, Mimi Shah could be called average. Especially since, he realized with new insight, she made it a point to blend into the background.

Pia had been stunning—the kind of beauty that grabbed everyone’s attention immediately. By the balls, he would say, thinking as a man who, for just a second, had also been caught in the trap. But that was the high point of knowing Pia.

Each minute, each day after that, the beauty would start to sag and fade under the claws of her personality. The spoiled, attention-hogging, immature woman that emerged within minutes of meeting her had forever put him off.

Pia had been vapid and shallow and manipulative and exhausting, but his brother, Santo, had loved her. Had found something in her to like.

Renzo thumped his head against the headrest of his seat, a sudden pike of grief skewering him.

How he wished Santo had never met Pia.

How he wished Santo had been stronger and asserted himself more around Pia, so she didn’t play with his heart like it was a rag doll.

How he wished Santo had cut off all ties with her after the first time he’d discovered she had cheated on him.

But no…

His older brother had been as loyal and loving as only he could be.

Always willing to see the good in everyone around him—whether it was his wife or their father, who fluttered around women as if he was a bee sniffing around flowers for pollen.

Or Renzo himself, even when he got too cynical and ruthless for Santo’s liking.

How Renzo wished he could have stopped Santo, and even Pia, from getting into the car on that stormy night and taking that dangerous curve while they were probably still in the middle of the argument he’d witnessed as they drove away.

Months later, the grief was just as fresh and just as sneaky, coming at him in a sudden blinding wave to nearly choke him. And it was one of those waves now that filled him with anger and frustration and resentment for this woman who was carrying his child.

His child…

Not Santo’s. As everyone would have assumed, since she was the surrogate mother for Pia’s baby.

A laugh burst through his mouth, filling the car with echoes of bitterness.

He was the father of the child that Mimi Shah was carrying—a secret only he and Santo had known. His brother had begged him to donate his sperm for their next IVF treatment, desperate to give Pia the child she wanted. Desperate to make one grand attempt at saving his marriage.

It hadn’t mattered much to Renzo.

He was not a man who had ever felt particularly paternal.

Maybe that came from having a father who was the epitome of selfish desires and indulgences.

Or maybe because he’d carried too many responsibilities from a young age.

Or perhaps, having been burned by Rosa, the girl he’d loved once, and having seen too many unbalanced relationships around him, he could never trust a woman to share his life in a way that would enrich it.

He’d happily donated his sperm because the child, whether it was carried by Pia or her stepsister, Mimi, would belong to Santo. And because a baby would bring happiness to Santo and maybe contentedness to Pia. Even his mother, he knew, had hoped for the latter.

Now Santo was gone, and Pia was gone, and her stubborn stepsister, Mimi, who had agreed to be their surrogate, was carrying his child.

Imagine his shock when the world-class fertility clinic director had reached out to him about the defaulted payments for the IVF treatment—it was just like his brother to forget people needed to be paid—and sent him all the paperwork that entailed.

He had paid for the past multiple rounds of extraction and the IVF and discovered a small discrepancy in the records.

Imagine his shock when he grilled the clinic director, exerting all his considerable influence, and discovered that his sister-in-law, Pia, hadn’t even gone through the last round of extraction, but that it had been her stepsister, Mimi.

So now, Mimi, the woman he didn’t like for reasons he didn’t understand, and who didn’t like him either, he was pretty sure, was carrying his child.

And while she hadn’t known it was his and not Santo’s, she had kept the pregnancy a secret for several months.

Cristo, he hated lies and manipulations and mind games. He’d had enough of them with their father and sometimes his entire family. But the fact of the matter was that whether he’d wanted a child or not, he was having one.

Soon.

And he couldn’t let the status quo stand.

He got out of the car, knowing he was about to change both their lives in ways they couldn’t even imagine.

But he wasn’t his father. He didn’t neglect his responsibilities, even if they were thrust on him by a cruel twist of fate.

This child was a DiCarlo.

Mimi Shah stared at the man standing on her doorstep, one shoulder pressed against the frame as if he expected the door to be shut in his face and was not taking any chances.

If she didn’t despise drama with every cell in her and if she hadn’t been prepared for him, she’d have done just that.

Renzo DiCarlo, the famous hotelier billionaire of Venice, had finally found her.

The man had always made her skin prickle—sometimes in anger and sometimes in undeniable attraction that she had managed to hide.

In the six years of Pia and Santo’s marriage, Renzo had always made it clear that her stepsister, their family, and Mimi were all nuisances he was putting up with for his brother’s sake.

Panic uncoiled in her stomach like a snake unfurling from its nest. Perhaps that was an exaggeration aided and abetted by her wonky hormones, but not by too much.

Her hand automatically drifted to her belly, and his haughty gaze followed the gesture. It made her look defensive, she realized too late.

One thick eyebrow rose in a challenge, even as he somehow very elegantly draped himself over the doorframe without actually stepping foot inside.

Every hackle that Mimi possessed rose.

She wasn’t foolish. She had imagined this very particular scenario a hundred times over the past few months. And here, she had been foolish. She had thought herself ready to face him and all that would follow.

With one mobile brow, he upended her hard-won composure and her resolve to stay calm and collected. Refusing to engage in his mind games, she moved away from the door without issuing an invitation.

His sudden laughter behind her made the small hairs on the nape of her neck prickle. Something loose and warm trickled through her veins, like the cork had been let out of a fizzy drink.

She rubbed her belly again, this time as a comforting gesture for herself. God, the last thing she needed right now was to still be attracted to this man. It would be like kneeling in the middle of a battleground and bowing her head to the enemy.

Again, a bit exaggerated but wholly based in truth.

“This is a…cozy room, Ms. Shah.” Cruel humor touched each word, along with a hefty dose of disbelief. “Nothing in the luxury repertoire of the DiCarlo hotels could match this.”

“It’s my home, Mr. DiCarlo,” she said, matching his exaggerated sweet tone. “And no, nothing you own would make me feel as happy or as safe.”

A sense of hurried alarm seized her as he surveyed the large, airy room with a leisure that grated on her nerves.

She had enough savings, from her work as a documentary maker and event videographer, to afford the biggest room in the Victorian house that one of her friends rented out. But she was also seven months pregnant, working all hours, and tired.