19. Dante
DANTE
I check my watch again.
Outside, Aria’s squeal slices through the air—loud, wild, happy—while Cassie chases her barefoot across the yard. I told them I had to check something inside. Total bullshit. Couldn’t stand there another damn minute with that little face looking up at me like I’m already hers.
Three days ago, I asked to run the test. It wasn’t hard to get samples. A strand of Aria’s hair from her brush. My blood drawn by a doctor who does home visits. The lab’s one I trust—owned by a guy who knows what happens to people who talk when they shouldn’t.
The call comes just after noon. I know the number. Knew the results were coming.
I pick it up without letting it ring twice.
“Romano?” The voice on the other end is clinical. Cold. Years of doing dirty jobs for rich men have stripped him of niceties.
“Yeah.”
“It’s confirmed.” No pause. No sugar-coating. “The little girl… she’s yours.”
Something in my chest breaks loose—a tether I didn’t know was holding me together.
“You sure?” I ask, my mind already going heady from the smackdown my emotions just received. Confusion. Hurt. Love. Anger. Pride.
“Results are definitive. 99.9% match.”
“Send me the file,” I say, pulse hammering against my throat. “And this stays buried. Anyone asks, you break their fucking fingers.”
“Understood, boss.”
I hang up and chuck the phone across the couch, burying my head in my hands.
She’s mine.
Aria’s mine.
The world should tilt, should crack open, and should rearrange itself into something new. But it doesn’t. It just keeps spinning, indifferent to the bomb that just detonated inside me.
I move to the window, checking the scene outside.
Outside, Aria runs circles around Cassie, curly hair flying free, feet kicking up grass. She’s laughing—loud, bright, the kind of sound that has me wrapped around her little finger.
She’s mine.
Every stubborn inch. Every wild smile. Every damn heartbeat.
Cassie’s got Aria on her hip now, pointing at something in the trees—probably a bird or squirrel. The kid’s face lights up, her tiny fingers reaching toward the sky, that wild blonde hair catching the sun.
The hair Cassie gave her. The eyes that mirror mine.
A memory slices through me without warning, brutal as a knife to the ribs.
I’m thirteen. Standing in my father’s study, watching him wipe blood from his knuckles with a white handkerchief like it’s nothing more than spilled wine.
“Remember this,” he says in a kind of gentle tone that’s more dangerous than rage. “Family is the only thing that matters in this life. The only thing you kill for. Or die for.”
I was old enough to know he meant it. Old enough to know I would, too.
He tosses the bloody cloth into the fire and watches it curl and blacken.
“Blood calls to blood, boy. That’s why betrayal cuts deepest when it comes from your own.”
I blink, and the memory fades. But the lesson remains, carved into bone.
Blood calls to blood.
And Cassie’s kept my blood from me for three years.
My hands curl into fists at my sides, nails biting into palms hard enough to draw blood. The pain grounds me, keeps me from putting my fist through the wall.
Because that’s what I want to do. I want to rage. Want to tear the house down around us. I want to grab Cassie by the shoulders and demand to know why—why she lied, why she kept this from me, why she let that piece of shit Gino near what’s mine.
But I don’t.
I stand there, still as stone, watching my daughter—my daughter—play in the yard with the woman who’s carried this secret like it’s nothing.
My reflection stares back at me in the window, until it doesn’t.
The kid.
She runs up and looks up at me through the glass, face pure sunshine, passing me a little wave. I wave back and smile, and she waves again before running off to be with her mother.
I peel my gaze from the glass as Cassie scoops Aria up, spinning her in a circle.
Mine. And I didn’t get to hold her when she opened those eyes for the first time. Didn’t hear her first word, see her first step. Three years stolen out from under me.
The rage simmers low, but I keep the mask in place.
All day, I wear it—the cold, unflinching version of myself people mistake for quiet control.
Cassie notices. Of course she does.
I catch her watching me over dinner, eyes tracking my face like she’s counting the ways I’m not acting right. Her walls creep higher, thicker, with every silent second between us. She feels the shift. The tension is bleeding off me.
But she doesn’t say it.
Neither do I.
“Everything okay?” Cassie asks, her eyes narrowing slightly.
“Uh-huh.” It rolls out easily, a half-truth designed to leave space for her to bring it up first.
But she holds it in, those sharp eyes of hers flickering across my face, searching for a crack. A tell. I give her nothing. No reaction. No slip-up.
Let her sit in it and wonder. I wait for her to break first.
After dinner, Aria beams up at me. “I’m gonna make cookies with Mommy. Want one?”
I nod, not trusting myself to speak.
Cassie’s already got ingredients spread across the counter, and Aria stands on a stool beside her, stirring a bowl with fierce concentration.
“Cookies!” Aria announces when she looks up at me like she’s making sure I’m still here, as if I might have forgotten in the thirty seconds since she mentioned it.
“I see that, nugget.” I flash her a smile.
While they bake, I head off into my study. My brain’s a goddamn scrambled egg around Cassie. She knows something’s off, but her obstinate ass still won’t tell me the truth.
And the longer I dwell on that? The angrier I get.
Half an hour later, I see Aria bounding into my study, without knocking. I don’t give a damn. The kid could set up camp in here, and I’d happily throw out the furniture.
“You need something, kiddo?”
Aria pulls out a cookie from behind her back, like it’s a secret—still warm, chocolate chips melting. She holds it up with such pride you’d think she’d built the damn thing from scratch.
“For you,” she says solemnly. “I made it special.”
I take it and try not to be that grown-ass man who cries. “Thank you, nugget.”
She stays there, watching expectantly until I take a bite. Only then does she nod, satisfied, and run back to help Cassie with the rest.
But before she goes, she says something that nearly brings me to my knees.
“You look like me.”
Simple. Innocent. Earth-shattering.
Even this three-year-old child sees the truth. Feels the truth. And Cassie’s walking around like I’ve got blinders on my eyes.
She knows something’s coming. Can probably feel it in the air like a storm front.
I don’t confront her yet. I want her to say it. Want the truth from her mouth, not a lab report.
So I wait. Help her clean up. Speak only when necessary. Let the tension build until it’s thick enough to cut.
She heads off to bed with a pathetic, meaningless goodnight.
Night falls heavily. The house sinks into quiet, and I think of what I want.
And the more I think? The more it feels like time’s slipping right through my goddamn hands.
Three years—gone. Stolen. I want Cassie to trust me enough to hand over the truth, but wanting her honesty doesn’t come close to how bad I want the time I’ve already lost. Time with my kid. Time as her father.
I find her in her room, perched on the edge of her bed, phone in hand. She looks up when I enter, tension written in every line of her body.
“Dante,” she says my name like it’s a warning.
I step farther into the room until I’m looming over her, until there’s nowhere for her to run.
“I know,” I hiss. “She’s mine.”