CHAPTER 11: The Surprise He Never Expected
1820 Words
Elena clutched the box like a lifeline and hurried upstairs.
Her hands shook so much she nearly dropped it trying to open it. She read the instructions three times, afraid she’d mess up something so small yet so huge.
It took longer than it should have.
Then all she could do was sit on the closed toilet lid, staring at the little white stick on the sink, a tiny window waiting to decide her
future.
Two minutes felt like two hours.
She thought of Matteo. Of his scars and his promises and the way he watched Tommaso on the soccer field with a tension that looked like regret and hope tangled together.
She thought of the one-year contract, end date stamped in ink.
She thought of her mother’s smile, of the nights she’d lain awake as a child listening to thunder, wishing someone would sit with her and say it was okay.
“Please,” she whispered to no one and everyone. “Please let me be strong enough for whatever this is.”
The timer on her phone buzzed.
Her breath hitched.
She stood on unsteady legs and leaned over the sink.
Two lines.
Clear. Sharp.
Positive.
For a heartbeat, her mind went blank.
Then everything rushed in—a roaring mix of fear and awe and wild, aching joy she hadn’t expected to feel so strongly.
A baby.
His baby.
Their baby.
Her hand pressed against her stomach, flat and unremarkable for now.
“Hi,” she whispered, ridiculous and tearful. “It’s… it’s me. I’m your mom, I guess.”
Her voice shook on the last word.
A knock on the door made her jump.
“Elena?” Rosa’s voice, hushed. “Every towel is accounted for. How is the stick?”
Elena laughed, choked and wet. “You have a strange way of asking life-changing questions, Rosa.”
“Better than asking in front of the boss,” Rosa said dryly. “Well?”
Elena opened the door.
Rosa took one look at her face and didn’t need to see the test.
“Ah,” she breathed. “Madonna.”
“I’m pregnant,” Elena said, as if saying it out loud would make it real. “Rosa, I’m… I’m really pregnant.”
Rosa’s eyes softened, lines around them deepening with something like joy and worry all at once.
“Of course you are,” she said. “The house has been holding its breath for weeks.”
Elena let out a watery laugh. “What… what do I do?”
“You sit,” Rosa ordered, steering her to the bed. “You breathe. You drink water. And then…”
“And then what?” Elena asked.
“And then you tell him,” Rosa said, no room for argument in her tone.
Fear slammed into her.
“What if he doesn’t want this?” she whispered. “What if a baby complicates his… business? His plans? Our contract?”
“What if he does want this?” Rosa countered gently. “What if this is the one thing that makes him fight harder to stay alive?”
Elena pressed her palm harder against her stomach.
“And what if it paints an even bigger target on my back?” she asked.
Rosa’s gaze didn’t waver.
“Then it is his job to make sure no one gets close enough to aim,” she said. “He signed that job the day he signed your contract. This just… makes the ink darker.”
Elena swallowed.
“When should I tell him?” she asked.
Rosa smiled faintly. “Before he notices that you cannot stand the smell of garlic anymore and starts thinking I have forgotten how to cook.”
A hysterical giggle bubbled up.
“Dinner,” Elena said, heart pounding. “I’ll tell him at dinner.”
“Good,” Rosa said. “Then I will make something that does not smell like garlic or death.”
When she left, the room felt too small for the enormity of what Elena carried now—not just in her body but in her future.
She lay back on the bed, one hand over her still-flat belly, and closed her eyes.
By the time dinner rolled around, she had run through a dozen scenarios.
He would be furious.
He would be distant.
He would be cold.
He would be… happy.
That last one hurt the most, because it was the one she wanted and feared in equal measure.
She wore a simple dress, nothing remarkable. She didn’t think she could handle anything that felt like playing dress-up when her insides were twisting.
The dining room was quiet when she arrived. The rain had started again, a gentler drizzle tapping against the windows.
Matteo stood by the sideboard, pouring himself a drink. He turned when she entered.
“Long day?” he asked, noting the tension in her shoulders.
“Something like that,” she said.
He pulled out her chair for her—a small gesture that still surprised her every time.
“You look like you’re about to deliver a verdict,” he said as they sat.
“In a way, I am,” she replied.
He arched a brow, taking a sip.
Rosa brought in soup—light, fragrant, mercifully non-garlicky—and vanished with the silent efficiency of a magician.
They ate in silence for a few minutes. Elena’s spoon clinked against the bowl with each tremor of her hand.
Matteo’s gaze narrowed.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
She set her spoon down.
He immediately shifted, alert. “Are you hurt? Did something happen today? Did someone—”
“I’m pregnant,” Elena blurted.
The words hung in the air between them, impossible to take back.
He froze.
For the first time since she’d met him, Matteo looked… startled.
The glass in his hand dangled, forgotten.
The clock on the wall ticked once, twice.
“Elena,” he said slowly. “Say that again.”
She swallowed. “I’m pregnant.”
Color drained from his face, then flooded back, chasing shock with something she couldn’t read.
“How long have you known?” he asked, voice low.
“Just today,” she said quickly. “I… I realized I was late, and I checked, and—”
She broke off, gesturing helplessly.
His eyes dropped, briefly, to her stomach. Then back to her face.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Yes.” Her voice steadied. “I took a test. Two, actually. Both positive.”
He exhaled, a sound somewhere between a laugh and a curse.
“Of course,” he muttered. “Of course the universe would give me a child in the middle of a war.”
Panic flared.
“If you don’t want—” she began, then forced herself to keep going. “If this is a problem for your… operations, your life, I can leave.
I can figure something out. I can—”
“Stop,” he said, sharper than before. “Don’t finish that sentence.”
She startled.
He set the glass down carefully, as if every movement had to be measured.
“You’re carrying my child,” he said. “There is no universe in which that is a ‘problem’ I want to erase.”
Her breath caught. “Then… what is it?”
“A miracle,” he said quietly. “And a liability. And the first thing in a very long time that makes me wish I was just a man in an office with boring tax reports.”
Her eyes burned.
“You… you’re not angry?” she asked, barely above a whisper.
He let out a humorless sound. “Angry at what? Biology? At the fact that we broke our own rules and the consequences decided to be… this?”
He shook his head.
“I have done many things in my life that deserve anger, Elena. This is not one of them.”
The knot in her chest loosened, just a little.
“So you… want this?” she asked.
He looked at her for a long time, something raw and vulnerable flickering in his eyes.
“I don’t know how to be a father,” he said. “I don’t know how to put a child in a world like mine and not fear every shadow.”
He paused.
“But I know,” he continued, voice rough, “that the idea of you walking out of here carrying my child without me knowing… that terrifies me more than Il Corvo, more than bullets, more than any enemy I’ve ever had.”
Her own fear mirrored his, inverted.
“I thought you might say it complicates the contract,” she admitted. “That I’m already living on borrowed time and this just multiplies the pressure.”
“The contract was always a lie,” he said. “A polite way to pretend this was temporary. I knew the moment you signed that nothing about this would be simple.”
Her heart stuttered.
“So what now?” she asked. “Do we… add a clause? Extend the deadline? Schedule my prenatal appointments between your shootouts?”
Despite everything, he smiled. A real one, brief but blinding.
“Yes,” he said. “And no. And everything in between.”
He stood, coming around the table, and knelt in front of her chair.
The sight of Matteo De Luca, feared mafia boss, on his knees in front of her made her throat close.
He laid his hand, cautiously, over hers on her stomach.
“Hello, little complication,” he murmured, eyes dropping. “I’m your father. I’m not a good man. But I will burn this city to the ground before I let anyone hurt you or your mother.”
Tears spilled over before she could stop them.
“Matteo,” she whispered.
He looked up at her, expression open in a way she’d never seen.
“You asked what I can give you,” he said. “This is it. Not peace. Not normal. But a promise that from now until my last breath, you and this child are not negotiating tools, or collateral, or items on a contract.”
He squeezed her hand gently.
“You are my family,” he said. “And I protect my family.”
Elena laughed and sobbed at the same time.
“Okay,” she whispered. “Then we… we’ll figure it out. The war. The contract. The baby. All of it.”
“Together,” he said.
For the first time since she’d walked into his office clutching a fake-leather bag and shaking knees, the future didn’t look like a distant shore you only reached through loss.
It looked like a path—dangerous, messy, full of storms.
But now, she wasn’t walking it alone.
- Writer
