They did not tell Luca immediately, not because they intended to hide it, but because some things needed to settle into truth before they could be spoken aloud to a child who had already lost one version of family and was only just beginning to trust a new one might hold.
Aria found herself moving through the days that followed in a state she could only describe as doubled: the same careful, attentive nanny she had always been with Luca, reading the same stories, debating the same questions about birds and breakfast foods, and beneath that familiar rhythm, something new and electric and entirely hers, the memory of Damien's mouth against hers on the terrace steps, the weight of his hand finding hers in passing moments throughout the day, brief and unhurried and increasingly unconcealed.
