Chapter 23
MARCO
Mist rose from the lake in slow ribbons, curling against the water like smoke.
Marco had been walking for an hour, maybe more, his body caught somewhere between Milan time and whatever schedule this mountain town kept.
Sleep hadn’t come at the inn—it was too quiet after months of city noise, too much space in that king-sized bed.
When the first light crept through the curtains, he’d given up and pulled on jeans and a sweater, slipping outside while even the birds were still waking.
The lake path wound through trees just beginning to turn.
Here and there a maple showed hints of gold and red at its edges, but most of the forest was still deep green, the mountains holding onto summer for a few more weeks.
The air held a bite—crisp, clean, carrying the faint scent of pine and leaves.
His breath made small clouds as he walked.
Nothing like the humidity of Miami or the exhaust-thick air of Manhattan.
He’d told Colton he needed to get away. Had gone to the events, flew to Milan, did the show as promised and then he’d simply vanished, hoping to find something real.
This seemed real enough. The cold seeping through his sweater. The crunch of leaves under his shoes—the wrong shoes for this path, but he hadn’t exactly packed for hiking. The mountains reflected in the water so perfectly he couldn’t tell where the sky ended and the lake began.
He rounded a bend in the path.
And stopped breathing.
Was he dreaming? How was it possible? Honey-blonde hair pulled back in a messy ponytail.
That profile—he’d traced it with his fingers in a dark hotel room, memorized the curve of her cheekbone, the line of her jaw.
She was walking toward him, not looking up yet, her attention on something in front of her.
Her.
Almost a year of searching. Of wondering if he’d imagined her, if that night had been some fever dream his empty life had conjured.
He’d gone back to the club three times. Hired someone to check guest lists.
Scrolled through thousands of social media photos looking for her face.
But there was nothing. It was as if she’d been a goddess come down to earth to mix with mortals for one night.
And here she was. In a tiny mountain town in North Carolina, of all places. Walking toward him on a misty late September morning like fate had finally decided to stop playing games.
His heart slammed against his ribs. He wanted to laugh. Wanted to run toward her and sweep her into his arms and demand to know her name—finally, finally know her name.
She looked up.
Her step faltered. A tiny hitch, a fraction of a second where her feet forgot what they were doing. Her blue eyes went wide, lips parting on a breath that fogged in the cold air.
“Hi.” The word came out rough, his voice betraying him. “It’s you.”
She’d stopped walking completely now. Her face had gone pale, which wasn’t the reaction he’d imagined during all those months of searching. He’d pictured surprise, yes. Maybe joy. Maybe the same electric recognition that was currently short-circuiting his brain. That she would run to him as well.
Not fear.
“I looked for you,” he said, taking a step closer. Leaves crunched under his feet on the path. “After that night. I went back to the club three times. I hired someone to—” He stopped, suddenly aware of how that sounded. “I just wanted to find you. To know your name.”
“Marco.” Her voice was barely a whisper.
“You know who I am?”
“I found out. Four months later.” She swallowed hard. “I was in the grocery store. I saw your face in a magazine.”
He processed that. She’d known who he was—for over four months. And she’d never reached out. Never tried to contact him. He pushed the hurt aside. There would be time for that conversation later. Right now, all that mattered was that she was here, in the flesh, standing ten feet away from him.
“I don’t even know your name,” he said. “Almost a year, and I still don’t know your name.”
Her hands tightened on something in front of her—he finally looked down at a handle of some kind. A stroller, he realized belatedly. She was pushing a stroller.
“Christina,” she said so quietly he almost missed it. “My name is Christina.”
Christina. He let it settle into his mind, finally having a word for the woman who’d haunted him. Christina. It suited her.
“Christina.” He smiled, and some of the tension in his chest eased. “I’ve been calling you ‘the girl from Miami’ in my head. Christina is better.”
She didn’t smile back.
His gaze dropped to the stroller, and for the first time he actually registered what she was doing out here at dawn.
Watching someone’s baby, probably. A niece or nephew, a friend’s child.
She was dressed as if she’d rolled out of bed—jeans, an oversized flannel shirt, no makeup.
Not exactly date attire. More like someone doing a favor for a tired parent.
“Nanny duty?” he asked, trying to keep his tone light. Trying to bridge the strange distance that had opened between them.
Her face went even paler.
“I—no.” Her voice cracked. “She’s mine.”
Mine. The word landed strangely. Marco’s eyes dropped to her left hand, still gripping the stroller handle. No ring. No tan line where a ring might have been.
“Yours,” he repeated. “You have a baby.”
She nodded, a jerky motion.
Something cold crept into his chest. She’d been single that night in Miami—at least, that’s what he’d assumed.
What they’d both assumed about each other, in that unspoken agreement to ask no questions.
But eleven months was a long time. Long enough to meet someone else, fall in love, start a family.
Long enough to forget one night with a stranger at a club.
“Congratulations.” The word came out flat. He tried again. “I mean—that’s wonderful. How old?”
“Two months.”
Two months.
The cold in his chest turned to something else. He looked at the stroller again, really looked this time. Pink blanket. A tiny fist curled against the fabric. Dark hair—not blonde like Christina’s, but dark. Almost black.
Two months old. Nine months of pregnancy.
Eleven months since Miami.
“Can I—” He stepped closer before he could stop himself, drawn toward the stroller like a magnet. “Can I see her?”
Christina’s whole body went rigid. “Marco—”
But he was already looking.
The baby was awake, staring up at the sky with the unfocused gaze of the very young. Rosebud lips. A button nose. Cheeks flushed pink from the morning chill. And that hair—dark and wispy, nothing like her mother’s honey-blonde.
The baby turned her head, and her eyes met his.
The ground tilted.
He knew that face. Not this particular face, not this specific baby, but the shape of it, the set of the eyebrows, the particular way the features arranged themselves.
He’d seen it a hundred times in silver frames on his mother’s vanity.
In photo albums pulled out at every holiday.
In the mirror, when he was young enough that people still remarked on how much he looked like his sister.
Sophia. This baby looked exactly like Sophia had looked in every infant photo their mother had ever shown him.
“Two months,” he heard himself say. His voice sounded distant, like it belonged to someone else. “Two months old.”
Christina was crying now. Silent tears tracking down her cheeks, her knuckles white on the stroller handle.
“Nine months of pregnancy.” He was doing the math out loud, unable to stop. “Eleven months total. Eleven months ago, I was in Miami.”
“Marco—”
“Eleven months ago, I met a woman at a club, and we spent one amazing night together, and she was gone by morning.” He couldn’t look away from the baby’s face. From those features that screamed Castellano as clearly as any genetic test. “Is she mine?”
The question hung in the cold air. A bird called from across the lake, loud and oblivious. The mist continued its slow rise from the water.
Christina’s breath hitched—a sob held back, or maybe released. Her hands were shaking on the stroller.
“Yes.” The word was barely audible. “Her name is Violet.”
Violet.
He had a daughter named Violet.
The world went sideways. He reached out blindly, his hand finding the stroller handle, needing something solid to hold onto. Violet. Two months old. Dark hair and features that matched every Castellano baby photo ever taken. His daughter.
“Why didn’t you—” His voice broke. He tried again. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t know who you were. Not until later, not until I saw—” Christina was crying harder now, her words tumbling out between gasps. “And then I did know, and I looked you up, and you were—you had all those women, all those parties, and your family—”
“My family?”
“Lawyers. Money. The kind of people who destroy girls like me.” Her voice turned fierce through the tears.
“I’m almost twenty-four years old. I have an online job that pays thirty thousand a year.
What was I supposed to do, call up the Castellano empire and say hey, I got pregnant from a one-night stand with your heir, the most eligible man on the planet? ”
Violet made a small sound—a coo, soft and questioning. Her tiny hand waved in the air, grasping at nothing.
Marco stared at that hand. At those miniature fingers. At the daughter he hadn’t known existed until two minutes ago.
“I have to go.” Christina was already moving, pulling the stroller back, turning it around. Her movements were jerky, panicked. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I have to—”
“Wait—” He reached for her arm without thinking.
She flinched.
He dropped his hand immediately, stepping back to give her space. “Christina. Please. I’m not—I’m not going to—”
But she was already walking away. Practically running, stroller wheels crunching over leaves as she retreated down the path. Her shoulders were shaking with sobs she wasn’t bothering to hide anymore.
Marco stood frozen, watching her go. Watching his daughter disappear around the bend in the path, taking everything he thought he knew about his life with her.
The mist was burning off now, the sun climbing higher. Somewhere up the hill, a door slammed. Her footsteps faded until there was nothing but birdsong and the gentle lap of water against the shore.
He had a daughter. A beautiful, healthy daughter who was two months old. And the woman he’d spent eleven months searching for had just run away from him like he was the monster in a nightmare.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. A text from Colton.
Where are you? Breakfast is ready.
Marco stared at the screen without seeing it. His hands were shaking. His whole body was shaking, and not just from the cold.
He needed to think. Needed to process. He needed to figure out what the hell he was supposed to do with the fact that his entire life had just been rearranged by a two-minute conversation on a lake path.
But first, he needed to find out where Christina lived. Because this conversation wasn’t over.
He started walking—not back toward the inn, but up the path, toward the cluster of cottages visible through the trees. Toward the woman who’d just turned his world inside out, and the daughter whose name he’d only just learned.
The morning light caught the first hints of autumn color in the leaves overhead, gold and red flickering against the green.