Three months after I walked out of a Boston hospital with empty arms, I stood at the altar of a chapel in Massachusetts, pretending my heart wasn’t still lying on a stainless-steel table somewhere in the dark.

The organ swelled with the wedding march. Candles glowed. Stained glass painted the aisle in reds and blues. Everyone around me smelled like perfume and happiness.

I smelled like grief.

My emerald-green bridesmaid dress hugged a body that still thought it had a baby to feed. My best friend, Camila, shimmered in lace and satin at the back of the chapel, fingers white-knuckled around her bouquet as the double doors inched open.

She’d never looked more beautiful. Or farther away from the person I’d been three months ago.

My daughter had a name. Emma. She never got to hear it.

“You okay?” Camila hissed when she passed me, her whisper barely cutting through the music.

Her hand brushed mine, a small, grounding touch in the middle of all the sparkle and expectation.

“I’m fine,” I lied, curling my fingers around hers like a lifeline. “This is your day. I’m not going to ruin it by being sad.”

“You being here means everything to me, Lyss,” she whispered back. “That’s all I want.”

She moved down the aisle toward Anthony, who was standing at the front of the chapel in his tux, grinning like a man who believed in forever. I took my place with the other bridesmaids and tried to arrange my face into something that wasn’t hollow.

Outside, thunder rolled over Boston, low and warning. The tall windows shuddered with the growing storm. Inside, the officiant started talking about love and commitment and “for better or worse.”

My chest tightened. I swallowed hard.

That’s when I heard it.

A baby crying.

Not a fussy little whimper. A full-bodied, desperate scream that bounced off the chapel’s vaulted ceiling and punched straight through my ribcage.

The music faltered. Heads turned. Murmurs rippled down the rows.

The side door opened, and a man walked in like he owned the whole city.

Even before someone had whispered about him at the rehearsal dinner, I’d known the name. Everyone in Boston with a working internet connection knew it.

Franco Ricchetti.

He carried a baby girl in his arms, maybe seven or eight months old, her cheeks blotchy and wet, tiny fists balled against his chest as she wailed. A young woman in a nanny uniform followed, her face drawn tight with panic.

The baby’s screams drowned out the officiant.

Franco bounced her. The nanny tried a bottle. A pacifier. A toy. The baby only cried harder, body stiff with misery.

Anthony’s mother shot a look at Franco that could’ve frozen water. Guests shifted in their seats. Phones were sneaked out for quick, half-hidden photos. Consequences buzzed in the air.

Camila flicked a worried glance back at me, her eyes asking a thousand questions.

I couldn’t look away from the baby.

Something in me cracked open. I’d spent three months trying to blunt my instincts, trying to convince my own body that it didn’t have anyone to hold, anyone to feed. It had never fully believed me. My chest ached. My arms felt too light. My heart hammered against my ribs with a wild, painful urgency.

The baby’s screams sharpened, climbing higher.

Before my brain could catch up, my body moved.

I stepped down from the altar, emerald skirt brushing the polished floor, and walked straight down the aisle toward the chaos. Whispers followed me like a breeze.

Who is she?
What is she doing?
Is she crazy?

Maybe I was.

Up close, Franco was even more intense than he’d been across the rehearsal dinner table the night before. He was tall, broad-shouldered, the expensive black suit doing nothing to soften the sharp lines of his body. His dark hair was neatly styled, his jaw shadowed, cheekbones cut like they’d been sketched by an impatient architect.

But his eyes—dark brown, almost black—were exhausted. Not the trendy “I’m busy and important” kind. The hollow kind. The “I haven’t slept in months and I’m afraid to admit why” kind.

“May I?” I asked, holding my arms out toward the baby.

He blinked, thrown for a second. “You’re the maid of honor.”

“Alyssa,” I corrected automatically. “Yes. And… may I try?”

The nanny gave him a helpless shrug. The baby screamed so hard she choked on her own breath.

Something in his expression slipped. Fear edged out control.

He handed me his daughter.

Sofia was heavier than Emma had been when I’d held her in my dreams. Warmer. Solid. Real. Her tiny body trembled with each sob as I gathered her against my chest.

The impact of her weight was a physical shock. It felt like coming home and being ripped apart at the same time.

I didn’t stay where everyone could see us. I turned and walked toward a small alcove off to the side of the chapel, partly hidden behind a carved wooden screen. Away from the whispers. Away from the judgment. Away from Anthony’s mother narrowing her eyes like my existence was a problem.

I sank onto a cushioned bench and tucked Sofia close, my palm supporting the back of her head.

“Shhh,” I murmured, rocking gently. “I know. I know. It’s too much, isn’t it?”

She didn’t quiet, but the pitch shifted. Less frantic, more exhausted. Her little fingers clawed at my neckline, searching for something she’d clearly never quite found before.

My dress had a row of buttons down the front. I’d chosen it partly because it was pretty and partly because some self-destructive part of me had wanted to feel the sting of what I’d planned for—a nursing-friendly wardrobe for a baby who never came home.

My fingers moved on their own.

I hesitated for half a heartbeat. This was insane. I was at a high-society Boston wedding. I was the maid of honor. The baby wasn’t mine. The man’s last name showed up in news articles that used words like “alleged” and “organized networks” and “under investigation.”

Then Sofia’s cry broke on a desperate, shattering note.

The world narrowed to her and me.

I unbuttoned the top of my dress, slid her into position, and guided her toward my breast, half-convinced my body wouldn’t cooperate. That three months of grief would have shut everything down for good.

Instead, Sofia latched like she’d been waiting her whole short life for that exact moment.

The crying stopped so fast it left an echo.

Her body melted against mine. Her hands unclenched. Soft, wet sounds filled the silence, shockingly intimate in the shadowed alcove. My milk let down with a fierce ache, and a wave of relief—terrible and beautiful—swept through me.

My eyes blurred. Tears slipped hot and helpless down my cheeks.

This wasn’t Emma. I knew that. But my body, my heart, didn’t understand the difference. For the first time in three months, something that had been wound so tight inside me finally loosened.

“Thank you.”

His voice came from the entrance to the alcove, low and rough.

I hadn’t heard him approach.

I looked up. Franco stood just inside the doorway, shoulders filling the frame, expensive shoes planted on ancient stone. His eyes weren’t on me, or my half-unbuttoned dress. They were locked on his daughter’s small, dark head.

I swallowed. “She was hungry,” I said softly. “How long has she been refusing bottles?”

He dragged a hand through his hair, wrecking the careful styling. “Weeks. Maybe longer,” he admitted, each word sounding like it cost him. “Three nannies quit. The pediatrician says she’s healthy. That some babies are just difficult.” His jaw tightened. “I thought bringing her here would distract her. Different environment, you know? But…”

“She’s not difficult,” I cut in gently. “She’s grieving.”

His head snapped up, his gaze hitting me like a physical force. “What?”

“Her mother,” I said quietly. “She died in childbirth, didn’t she?”

I’d heard it the night before, whispered over wine glasses and tiny desserts. The tragic story of a Boston underworld figure whose wife had died having his child. People said “tragic” with the same tone they used for true crime podcasts. Curious. Hungry.

He nodded once, wary now. “Yes.”

“Sofia never got to nurse,” I said, my fingers stroking the baby’s soft dark hair—so much like his. “Never got skin-to-skin contact with her mother. She went from the womb straight into arms that didn’t smell right, didn’t sound right, didn’t feel safe. And since then, she’s been handed from nanny to nanny, bottle to bottle. Her body is still looking for something it was wired to expect and never got.”

He stared at me like I’d pulled the thoughts straight out of his head.

“She’s not difficult,” I repeated. “She’s desperate.”

Franco moved closer and sat on the opposite end of the bench, leaving the right amount of space, like he was used to calculating distance and angles in every room he stepped into. Up close, I could see the fine lines etched around his eyes, the faint stubble on his jaw, the tired slump in the set of his shoulders.

He didn’t look like the caricature from half-baked news articles. He looked like a man who’d been failing at the most important job of his life and knew it.

“The doctors never said that,” he said finally. “They checked for reflux. Allergies. All the charts. They said some babies are just fussy. That she’d outgrow it.”

“Some doctors don’t think about trauma,” I said. “Especially in infants. They look for what they can measure. But this?” I glanced down at Sofia, blissfully feeding. “This is emotional. Biological. She’s been waiting months for someone to feel like this.”

Silence stretched between us, filled with Sofia’s soft gulps and the muffled sound of the wedding ceremony resuming back in the chapel.

“You lost a baby,” Franco said quietly.

It wasn’t a question.

I stiffened. “How did you—”

“Your body,” he said. His voice softened around the edges. “The way you moved when she cried. The way you knew exactly what to do. The way you’re crying now.”

I hadn’t realized the tears were still coming. I swiped at my face, embarrassed and raw.

“Three months ago,” I said. “Emergency C-section. She was early. Too early.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Simple. Direct. No platitudes, no “everything happens for a reason.” Just the words I’d wanted to hear in that hospital room and never got.

They almost undid me.

“Why are you doing this, Alyssa?” he asked. “You don’t know us. You could have stayed up there with your friend and pretended this wasn’t happening.”

“I couldn’t.” The truth came out before I could pretty it up. “I heard her crying and… something in me woke up. The part that’s been shut down since Emma died.”

Sofia stopped nursing, asleep so quickly it was almost funny. Milk drunk, lips slack. I shifted her gently to my shoulder, re-buttoning my dress with one hand.

Franco watched like he was observing a miracle.

“How long can you stay?” he asked suddenly.

I blinked. “Excuse me?”

“At the reception,” he clarified. “After the ceremony. How long before you have to leave?”

Confusion must have been painted all over my face, because he kept talking, words gaining speed, urgency.

“She needs you. Not for ten minutes. Not for this moment only. She needs someone who understands what she’s missing. Someone who can give her what I can’t.” His throat worked, like the next words were hard to say. “I need you. To help her. To help me figure out how to be what she needs.”

Every rational part of my brain screamed.

You don’t know him.
You’ve known his existence for twenty-four hours.
People whisper words like “racketeering” and “illegal” around his name.
You don’t move into a crime boss’s life because his baby latched once.

Out loud, I said, “I have clients. I’m a child psychologist. I have a practice. A schedule. People depending on me.”

“I’ll pay you whatever you’re making,” he said immediately. “Double it, if you want.” His eyes were still on his daughter. “Please. Just for a few weeks. Until we can figure out a better solution. Until she’s stable.”

I should have said no.

Instead, I looked down at Sofia’s peaceful face—the same baby who’d been inconsolable fifteen minutes ago—and felt my resistance crumble.

“Two weeks,” I heard myself say. “That’s all I can promise. Two weeks.”

The breath he let out was almost a groan of relief. “Two weeks,” he repeated. “Thank you.”

The music swelled again, signaling the end of the ceremony. Through the gap in the alcove screen, I saw guests starting to rise, laughing and talking, ready for cocktails and photos and a catered future.

My own future had just swerved off the map.

The reception blurred past like a dream.

I stayed in the alcove at first, letting Sofia sleep against my chest. Franco hovered nearby, not hovering. It felt like he’d perfected that trick—being close enough to protect, far enough not to threaten.

Eventually, Camila found us.

“There you are,” she said, still glowing with post-ceremony bliss, eyes softening when she saw the baby. “Anthony’s mom explained who he is. And who she is.” She glanced between me and Franco. “That was… kind of you to help.”

“She saved my daughter from a complete meltdown,” Franco said, sounding like a man giving testimony. “I’m the one who’s grateful.”

Camila’s gaze lingered on my face. She saw the redness around my eyes, the question in my shoulders, the way I couldn’t seem to stop touching Sofia even while the baby slept.

“We’ll talk later,” she murmured to me. “Promise me you won’t disappear before then.”

“Find me,” I said. “I need to talk to you too.”

Later, when the cake had been cut and the dance floor jammed with drunk uncles and bridesmaids trying not to cry off their makeup, I crossed the room to where Camila stood by the bar.

“I’m going to help him,” I said without preamble. “For two weeks. Move in. Work with Sofia. See if I can stabilize her.”

She stared at me like I’d just told her I was moving to Mars. “Alyssa, do you know who he is? What he does?”

“I know enough,” I said. “I Googled. Half of it is theories. The other half is written like a legal memo. But none of that is Sofia’s fault.”

“What about you?” she asked gently. “You’re barely keeping yourself upright. Is taking care of another baby really going to help?”

“It already is,” I admitted, voice cracking. “When I’m holding her, when she’s nursing and settles, it’s like I can breathe again. For the first time in months.”

Camila closed her eyes briefly, then opened them and squeezed my hand.

“Text me every day,” she said. “Call me. If anything feels off—anything—I come get you. No argument.”

“Deal.”

By ten p.m., the exhaustion hit me like a freight train. Sofia woke, fussed, then rooted against my chest until I walked us to a quiet corner and let her latch again. People whispered and side-eyed, but no one said anything where I could hear it.

I texted Franco: Ready to go when you are.

His response came seconds later: Driver is waiting out front. Black sedan.

Anthony intercepted me on my way out, his tie loosened, his expression serious despite the party still in full swing.

“Mr. Ricchetti is… a family friend,” he said carefully. “But he’s not someone you want to owe anything to.”

“I’m not joining his organization,” I said. “I’m helping his daughter eat.”

“With men like him, those lines blur fast,” Anthony warned. “Just… keep your boundaries, okay?”

Boundaries. Right.

The black sedan was exactly where Franco had said it would be, sleek enough to look out of place in the quiet suburban street. The driver opened the door with professional politeness.

On the short ride back to my shoebox Boston apartment, Sofia stirred, then woke fully, searching for comfort. My body answered before my head did.

In the dim light of the city, with the skyline of downtown Massachusetts flickering beyond the car window, I had my first quiet, uninterrupted moment with the reality of what I’d done.

I’d just agreed to move into the penthouse of a man whose name regularly appeared in crime reporting. To nurse his daughter. To step into his world for two weeks.

When I laid Sofia down on my bed that night, surrounded by the remnants of my “old” life—therapy textbooks, half-packed boxes of baby clothes I hadn’t been able to donate—I knew the lie I was telling myself.

I could pretend it was just two weeks.

My body already knew better.

The movers arrived at seven-thirty the next morning, exactly when Franco said they would.

Two women in company uniforms. No questions. Just clipboards and efficiency. They packed what I pointed at: clothes, toiletries, my laptop, an encrypted external drive of client files, framed degrees, the worn developmental psychology texts I still referenced even with a doctorate.

“Family emergency?” Mrs. Peterson said over the phone when I called to reschedule her son’s therapy session.

“Something like that,” I said. “Everyone’s okay. Just… unexpected complications.”

I hung up feeling like a liar, even though technically nothing I’d said was untrue.

Franco’s driver picked us up in the same black sedan, this time with Sofia already strapped into a gleaming car seat that probably cost more than my monthly rent.

“Good morning, Miss Turner,” the driver said. “Mr. Ricchetti is waiting at the penthouse.”

Downtown Boston was just waking up, the Financial District filling with people in suits and sneakers, coffee cups clutched like survival tools. The building we pulled up to was a tower of glass and steel that reflected the morning light, sharp and polished and unapologetically expensive.

Security in the lobby was tight. Metal detectors. Guards. A front desk that required ID and a signature. The elevator needed a keycard to access the top floor.

The penthouse elevator doors opened straight into his world.

Floor-to-ceiling windows framed the Boston skyline, the Charles River a silver ribbon in the distance. Sleek furniture, dark wood, discreet art on the walls. It looked like the kind of place where decisions were made that never appeared in any official records.

Franco stood near the windows, phone pressed to his ear, speaking rapid Italian. Even without understanding the words, I recognized the tone: something had gone wrong, and he was delegating solutions.

He saw us, lifted a hand in acknowledgment, then finished the call.

He hung up and looked at me.

“You came,” he said softly, a hint of disbelief in his voice.

“I said I would,” I replied.

“People say a lot of things they don’t mean.”

Up close in daylight, he looked rougher. Dark circles under his eyes. Faint lines around his mouth. The tailored suit didn’t hide the bone-deep exhaustion.

“Thank you,” he said. “For being someone who keeps her word.”

Sofia’s face scrunched, the first sign of a cry. She recognized him, but she was already searching for what she’d found with me the night before.

He noticed it too. Something flickered in his expression—jealousy, maybe. Or guilt.

“There’s a room set up for you,” he said, gesturing down the hallway. “Next to Sofia’s nursery. I had them bring in a chair for feeding, extra pillows. Whatever the consultant suggested.”

“You called a consultant?” I asked, surprised.

“Last night,” he admitted. “After you left. She couldn’t make it, but she told me what you might need.”

It was such a normal thing to do that it threw me more than the security detail had.

The room he’d given me was bigger than my entire apartment. Soft gray walls. A wide bed with white linens. An armchair and ottoman by a window overlooking the city. A small bassinet for Sofia if she needed to sleep nearby during the day.

Sofia started crying in earnest. My hands went to the buttons of my blouse automatically.

“I’ll… make coffee,” Franco said, turning on his heel so fast it was almost funny. “Unless you don’t drink coffee.”

“I do,” I called after him. “Coffee is essential.”

He closed the door behind him, giving me privacy I hadn’t asked for but appreciated anyway.

I settled into the glider, brought Sofia to my breast, and the world narrowed again to the sound of her eating and the rhythmic rock of the chair.

My phone buzzed with a text from Camila. You alive?

Safe and sound, I wrote back. This place is huge.

Text me every few hours, she replied. I’m serious.

Yes, Mom, I typed, adding a heart emoji.

If the chapel had been a surreal bubble, the penthouse became its own universe.

Mornings bled into afternoons. I fed Sofia, changed her, carried her, wore her in a sling while I answered work emails. During her naps, I unpacked and turned the guest room into something that looked less like a hotel suite and more like a temporary home.

The nursery across the hall was stocked with everything money could buy—clothes in tiny sizes, bottles, formula, blankets, toys she was too young for yet. Everything except the one thing she’d actually needed: a body that felt like home.

“We’re going to catch you up,” I told her one day as I helped her practice sitting, pillows propped around so she wouldn’t topple over. “You’re going to be just fine.”

Marco, one of Franco’s security guys, leaned against the doorway, watching us. He was big and broad, with salt-and-pepper hair and eyes that missed nothing.

“She seems calmer,” he observed.

“She feels safer,” I said. “That makes everything easier.”

Franco adapted quickly.

At first, he hovered, unsure where to put himself. He’d stand by the doorway, watching me change diapers, feed Sofia, do infant-massage exercises. He’d flinch at her cries, his shoulders tensing like he expected to be judged at any moment.

Then he started joining in.

He took over bath time one night, kneeling beside the baby tub, sleeves rolled up, huge hands ridiculously gentle as he washed Sofia’s hair.

“You’re good at this,” I said.

“I watch videos,” he confessed. “Read articles. It’s easier when you’re here to show me I’m not going to break her.”

He cooked, too.

Some nights I’d sit in the living room with Sofia sleeping on my chest while the scent of garlic and tomatoes drifted from the kitchen. He’d appear with plates of risotto or chicken parm or simple pasta that tasted better than anything I could ever make.

“My mother taught me,” he said one evening when I asked. “She said a real man should know how to feed the people he loves.”

His voice softened when he said “loves,” like it was a fragile word he didn’t use often.

We orbit each other, at first.

Our conversations stayed mostly about Sofia. Feeding schedules. Sleep patterns. Developmental milestones.

He listened when I talked about trauma in infants, about the way early losses imprint on the body. When his attention shifted to business calls, he moved to his office, closing the door so Sofia and I didn’t hear the tone he used with the outside world.

But walls only hold for so long.

The night it cracked started with risotto and ended with my face pressed into his shirt.

We were sitting at the massive dining table, city lights glittering beyond the windows, Sofia asleep in her crib down the hall. The atmosphere felt warmer than usual. Softer.

“Tell me about Emma,” he said.

Nobody said her name. It startled me so much I set my fork down.

“Most people act like she never existed,” I said slowly. “Like mentioning her will shatter me.”

“Does it?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “But that’s not a reason not to say it.”

I told him about the pregnancy. About the stress I’d been under with my ex, the nights I’d slept in my car because it was safer than going home. About the emergency C-section at thirty-two weeks. About waking up in recovery to a nurse who wouldn’t meet my eyes and a bed that was too empty.

“I never got to hold her,” I said, voice raw. “Hospital policy. They said they had to take her away. Like she was a problem to be filed instead of a person.”

Franco reached across the table and took my hand.

“She knew you loved her,” he said. “Babies know. Even if they can’t stay.”

“How can you be so sure?” I whispered.

“Because I watch Sofia with you,” he said simply. “The way she melts into you. The way your whole body answers hers. That kind of love doesn’t just appear. It lives in you. Emma had it, too.”

The tears came fast after that. Hot and unstoppable.

He tugged gently on my hand, and I let him pull me up, then into his arms. He smelled like cologne and garlic and something uniquely him.

For the first time since the hospital, I let myself fall apart in front of someone.

He held me through all of it.

“You did the best you could with what you knew then,” he said when I finally quieted. “That’s all any of us ever do.”

We stayed there for a long time—me, a child psychologist with a shattered heart, and him, a man with one foot in Boston’s shadows—holding onto each other like the floor might disappear.

Two weeks turned into three without anyone naming the shift.

Sofia gained weight. Her cheeks filled out. Her eyes brightened. Her pediatrician stared at the growth chart and shook her head like she’d just seen a magic trick.

“Whatever you’re doing, don’t stop,” she said.

What I was doing was simple and impossible at the same time.

I was loving a baby who wasn’t mine. Living in a penthouse owned by a man who scared half the city. Falling asleep at night to the sound of his footsteps pacing the hall when he thought I was already out.

I was also, slowly, breathing again.

Camila saw it the first time we met for coffee after I moved in.

“You look different,” she said, studying my face over the rim of her latte. “Less haunted.”

“I’m… busier,” I said lamely. “Sofia doesn’t leave a lot of room for spirals.”

“And her father?” she asked, one eyebrow arching. “How’s that situation?”

“Complicated,” I said. Which was like calling the Atlantic a puddle. “He’s trying.”

“You’re falling for him,” she said flatly.

I shook my head too quickly.

“Alyssa,” she said. “I saw the way you looked when you said ‘he’s trying.’ You’re gone.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “This is temporary. Once Sofia is stable, I go back to my life.”

“Have you talked about that?” she asked. “Like, recently?”

My silence answered for me.

“Maybe you should,” she said gently. “Before the temporary feels permanent and you’re the only one who doesn’t know it.”

She wasn’t wrong.

But every time Franco looked at me over Sofia’s head, or brushed his hand lightly against my back when he passed behind my chair, the idea of leaving felt like being asked to tear out my own heart.

The universe didn’t wait for us to get our feelings sorted out before throwing gasoline on our lives.

The first match was an email.

It arrived in Camila’s inbox at three o’clock in the morning, Boston time. She woke up, saw my name and Sofia’s in subject lines, and called me so fast my phone vibrated off the nightstand.

“Alyssa, I’m sorry it’s late,” she said. “But I just got something you need to see.”

I slipped into the hallway so I wouldn’t wake Franco. “What is it?”

“An email from someone who says they know what’s happening with you and Franco,” she said, voice tight. “They attached photos. Of you. Of the penthouse. Of you nursing Sofia.”

My stomach dropped.

“Send it to me,” I said.

When it came through, my hands shook as I scrolled.

There I was, in grainy but unmistakable images—pushing Sofia’s stroller down a Boston sidewalk, sitting on the penthouse couch with her latched under a blanket, stepping into the lobby with Franco at my side. There were photos of the upstate safe house he’d taken us to for a week when some business situation had gone bad in the city, the tree line visible through the windows, guards in the blurry background.

Someone had been watching us.

The message was written in the kind of polite, weaponized language that lawyers loved and innocent people found terrifying.

Tell your friend she’s in danger.
Ricchetti is using her grief.
If she doesn’t leave, we’ll forward these to law enforcement. To child protective services.
Does she really think they’ll approve of a stranger breastfeeding the child of a known criminal?

Known. Not proven. Not convicted. Just whispered about, printed with “alleged” and “according to sources.”

But investigations had a momentum of their own once they started. You couldn’t control how far they rolled or who got crushed along the way.

My heart pounded so hard I could hear it in my ears.

Franco was already awake when I slipped back into the bedroom. He sat on the edge of the bed, phone in hand, jaw clenched.

“Vincent just called,” he said. Vincent was his head of intelligence, which was a polite way of saying “the man who knows everything about everyone.” “Someone leaked photos to a rival. They’re using them as leverage.”

“The same someone who emailed Camila,” I said, handing him my phone. “They’re threatening to make this a legal nightmare if I don’t leave.”

He read the email, his expression going from anger to something darker.

“This is my fault,” he said quietly. “I should have predicted they’d come at me sideways, through you and Sofia.”

“You can’t control everything,” I said, which felt like blasphemy in his world.

“I can control whether the woman I love and my daughter are safe,” he shot back. Then stopped, like he’d heard himself.

The woman I love.

The words were out there, heavy and real.

“Alyssa,” he said, tone shifting. “You and Sofia need to go somewhere safe. Somewhere no one knows. I’ll handle this, but I won’t do it with you in the line of fire.”

“We already did the safe house thing,” I reminded him. “We agreed I wouldn’t be locked away while you handled the ugly parts.”

“That was before they threatened to drag you into court and paint you as unfit,” he said. “They’ll twist what you’re doing with Sofia into something horrible if they think it’ll weaken me.”

“Then we fight,” I said. “Together. You always said you didn’t want to be the man who hides things from his family. Don’t start now.”

“This isn’t about pride,” he insisted. “It’s about keeping you alive.”

“I’m not leaving,” I said. My voice shook, but I meant it. “If I run now, they learn a lesson—that threatening me works. Do you really want to teach them that?”

He stared at me for a long moment. Then he dragged a hand over his face and let out a rough breath.

“You’re stubborn,” he said.

“So are you,” I replied.

We met in the middle.

He called a meeting with his inner circle. Marco. Vincent. A couple of other men whose names I’d heard but hadn’t learned to attach to faces.

Vincent laid out the situation with the detached clarity of someone who’d seen worse but knew better than to say so.

“The photos required sustained surveillance,” he said, tapping printed images on Franco’s desk. “Angles like this?” A shot of me leaving the pediatrician’s office with Sofia, blanket draped over her carrier. “That’s someone on the inside. Security. Staff. Building personnel. They knew your schedule well enough to be there in advance.”

“And the email?” I asked.

“The language is designed to scare,” he said. “They know enough about the system to throw around phrases like ‘endangerment’ and ‘improper relationship’ without crossing into outright threats. My money is on someone with legal connections.”

“You’re sure Santini’s involved?” Franco asked.

I knew that name now, too. One of the older bosses. Old-school. Misogynistic. The kind of man who thought “family values” meant wives were accessories and daughters were bargaining chips.

“Strong probability,” Vincent said. “Our source inside his crew says he’s been complaining you’ve gone soft since the Yamaguchi situation. That you’re letting ‘some woman’ dictate your decisions.”

Some woman.

“Let him underestimate me,” I said. “That’s his mistake.”

Franco shot me a look that was half pride, half worry.

“We find the leak first,” he said. “Then we deal with Santini.”

It didn’t take long.

Three days later, Marco walked into Franco’s office with a young guy in tow—a member of the security team, barely thirty, one eye already swelling.

“This is Thomas,” Vincent said. “He’s been reporting our movements to Santini for weeks. Taking photos. Sending schedules.”

“Why?” Franco asked, voice quiet.

Thomas spat blood onto the floor. “Because you forgot what this life is,” he said bitterly. “You’re sitting up here playing house while the rest of us risk everything. Santini still understands strength. You’re going soft.”

“So you endangered my daughter,” Franco said. “And Alyssa. For what? A promotion? A pat on the head from an old man who’d sell you out the second it suited him?”

Thomas didn’t look away. “I did what I had to do for the family.”

“You betrayed it,” Franco said. “And there are consequences for that.”

The air in the room went cold. My heart climbed into my throat.

This was the part of his world I hadn’t seen up close yet. The part nobody made romance novels about because there was no way to soften it.

“Do you want me to leave?” I asked softly.

He shook his head once without looking at me. “No. I told you you’d see everything. I meant it.”

He turned his attention back to Thomas.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Franco said. “You’re going to call Santini and tell him you’ve been compromised. That I know everything. That’s all. Then you’re going to leave Boston and never come back.”

Thomas’s mouth fell open. “That’s it? You’re letting me walk?”

“I’m giving you the only chance you’re going to get,” Franco said. “Because my daughter is going to grow up in this city, and if she hears my name in stories, I want her to know there were moments I could have chosen blood and didn’t. But understand this: anyone who hears your name from now on will know you’re a traitor. That’s a death sentence with or without me.”

Marco led Thomas out, his hand heavy on the younger man’s shoulder. The room hummed with stunned silence.

“You’re wondering why I didn’t have him taken out,” Franco said to me.

“Yeah,” I admitted. “A little.”

“Because I’m tired of being exactly what people expect me to be,” he said. “Because I have a daughter watching now. And because the man Santini thinks I am would’ve pulled the trigger himself. I want him to see I’m playing a different game.”

“A smarter one,” Vincent added. “Thomas will run straight to Santini. Tell him what happened. In doing so, he’ll confirm everything we suspected. And Santini will react. When he does, we’ll be ready.”

Ready meant planning. Planning meant meetings. Meetings meant more nights where Franco’s office door stayed closed while voices murmured inside, and I sat on the sofa with Sofia in my lap, reading her baby books and pretending my heart wasn’t racing.

The “family dinner” that had been on the calendar for weeks—the annual gathering of all the major players in the New England underworld—suddenly became the stage for something much bigger.

Franco asked me to go with him.

“It’s expected to bring family,” he said. “Usually wives. Partners. People who matter.”

“You want to walk into a room full of men like Santini and announce that I’m your family?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “Because they already know. The photos made sure of that. Showing up with you on my arm tells them I’m not ashamed of what we are. Or afraid.”

We spent days preparing.

Not just clothes—though that took time, too. Camila helped me pick out a deep burgundy dress that managed to be both modest and devastating, and Franco surprised me with simple diamond earrings that flashed when I moved.

Mostly, we prepared me.

He walked me through the power structure. Who would be there. Which names mattered. Which faces hid knives behind their smiles.

“The Costellos control most of the East Coast shipping,” he said. “Keep it surface-level with them. Sports. Weather. Don’t let them drag you into talk about ports or customs.”

He smirked when I rolled my eyes.

“Maria Giordano runs Atlantic City and parts of Philly,” he continued. “Her husband likes to pretend he’s in charge, but she’s the one you look at when you speak. She respects honesty. Don’t try to flatter her. She’ll see right through it.”

“And Santini?” I asked.

His expression hardened. “He’ll try to provoke you. Make comments about you being an outsider. About Sofia. He’s hoping to get a reaction he can point at and say, ‘See? She’s unstable. Emotional. A liability.’ You don’t give him that.”

“What do I give him?” I asked.

“A smile when appropriate,” Franco said. “Silence when it’s not. And the knowledge that he cannot intimidate you with what he thinks he knows.”

The night of the dinner, I barely recognized myself in the mirror.

The burgundy dress hugged my curves without screaming for attention. My hair fell in soft waves over my shoulders. The diamonds at my ears caught the warm light. I looked like the polished partner of a powerful man.

Inside, I was still the woman who’d walked out of a Boston hospital with empty arms.

Franco appeared in the doorway behind me. His reflection in the mirror was a study in controlled power—dark suit, crisp shirt, tie straight, expression softer when he looked at me.

“You’re beautiful,” he said quietly. “But more importantly, you look like you belong there. Because you do.”

My hand trembled a little as I picked up my clutch. “Let’s go confuse some criminals, then,” I said.

The restaurant hosting the dinner had been cleared for the night. Every table dripped white linens and silver. Every seat was occupied by someone dangerous, wearing the illusion of respectability like a tailored coat.

Conversations dipped as we entered. Heads turned. Eyes lingered.

Franco kept his hand on the small of my back, warm and steady.

“This is Alyssa Turner,” he said as he introduced me around. “She’s family.”

The word landed differently than “girlfriend” or “companion” would have. It set a boundary. A warning.

Maria Giordano reached us first. She was in her fifties, elegant and sharp-eyed, with a presence that demanded space without asking.

“So this is the woman everyone’s whispering about,” she said, looking me over with frank curiosity. “Child psychologist, yes?”

“Yes,” I said. “Nice to meet you, Ms. Giordano.”

“How are you finding our very messy corner of the country?” she asked.

“Complicated,” I answered. “But worth navigating for the right reasons.”

Her lips curved, a hint of approval. “Honest,” she said. “I like that. Most people in this room wouldn’t know honesty if it bit them.”

She shot Franco a look. “Hold onto her. There aren’t many like this left.”

The dinner progressed in courses: appetizers, pasta, something rich and meat-based I barely tasted. Conversations ebbed and flowed around shipping routes and real estate fronts and “mutual interests,” all couched in language that would sound boring in a court transcript and meant everything to the men saying it.

Santini made his move during dessert.

He approached our table with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes and took the empty chair beside me without waiting for an invitation.

“So you’re the one who’s tamed our Franco,” he said, his voice oily. “Impressive.”

“I haven’t tamed anyone,” I said, keeping my tone even. “We’re building something together.”

His smile sharpened. “Do you understand what you’ve walked into, Miss Turner?” he asked. “The kind of life this entails?”

Under the table, Franco’s hand closed around mine. A silent squeeze. I’m right here.

“I understand that every relationship comes with challenges,” I said. “Ours just happen to involve slightly more complicated dinner parties.”

A few people nearby smothered smiles.

Santini’s eyes cooled. “You’re very sure of yourself,” he said. “I’ve seen outsiders like you before. They think they can handle this world until there’s blood on the floor.”

“Roberto,” Franco said quietly. “This isn’t the time.”

“Oh, I think it’s exactly the time,” Santini mused. “Especially when children are involved. How is Sofia, by the way? Walking yet?”

Ice slid down my spine. The way he said her name made it clear: he’d seen the photos. He knew exactly what strings he was trying to pull.

“She’s thriving,” I said. “It’s amazing what happens when people stop treating a child like a problem and start treating her like a person.”

His gaze sharpened. For a flicker, he looked less like a grandfatherly figure and more like what he really was: a man who’d shattered lives because it was convenient.

“We all protect what matters most,” he said. “In our own ways.”

He stood, smoothing his jacket. “Enjoy the evening,” he said, and walked away.

Franco exhaled slowly once he was out of earshot.

“That was either very brave or very reckless,” he murmured.

“Probably both,” I said. “But I’m not going to sit here and let him pretend we’re afraid of what he knows.”

“Good,” Franco said. “Because now he knows we’re not as easy to corner as he thought.”

The rest of the night, Santini watched us. But he didn’t come back to the table.

He didn’t have to.

Within forty-eight hours, Vincent had a dossier thick enough to crush a man’s career.

“Your friend has been busy,” Vincent said, laying folders on Franco’s desk back at the penthouse. “Side meetings. Side deals. Overtures to people who promised him support if he moved to take over your territory.”

“Enough to convince the others?” Franco asked.

“If they care about the rules they claim to live by,” Vincent said. “He’s been undermining agreements he helped create. Pocketing more than his share. Using your personal life as proof you’re ‘unfit.’”

“Then we don’t shoot him,” Franco said. “We show everyone exactly who he is.”

The neutral meeting that followed felt almost anticlimactic after everything that had led up to it.

We met in a private room at a restaurant owned by a family that owed neither man allegiance. Santini sat at one end of the table, Franco at the other. I took a seat beside Franco, my pulse thudding in my ears.

“This is unnecessary,” Santini said when he saw me. “We both know how this ends. You step back, hand over a portion of your territory, I ensure this little… domestic situation doesn’t cause trouble. Everyone’s happy.”

“You mean you’re happy,” Franco said. “I’m not interested in being muscled into retirement because my daughter finally has someone who knows how to hold her.”

Santini’s eyes flicked my way. “You’ve become sentimental,” he said. “Soft. That’s dangerous in our world.”

“Maybe our world needs someone who can be both strong and human,” I said quietly.

He glanced at me like I’d spoken out of turn.

Franco slid the dossier across the table.

“Here’s what’s actually dangerous,” he said. “You made deals behind everyone’s back. Tried to sabotage peace agreements. Hired someone to spy on my home, my family. And you did all of it while pretending to be the guardian of our traditions.”

Santini flipped through the pages, his face going pale, then flushed.

“You expect them to believe this?” he scoffed. “You could have fabricated half of it.”

“They’ll believe the recordings,” Vincent said from his seat near the door. “And the timestamps. And the bank transfers.”

Franco leaned back in his chair. “Retire,” he said. “Blame your health. Enjoy your grandchildren. Hand your territory to someone who understands that times are changing. Do that, and this dossier never leaves this room.”

“And if I don’t?” Santini asked.

“Then everyone sees it,” Franco said. “And we let them decide what to do with you.”

It wasn’t clean. It wasn’t noble. But it was better than the alternative.

A week later, Santini announced his retirement. Officially, it was health issues. Unofficially, everyone knew there was more to the story. In the circles that mattered, his name lost weight overnight.

The threats stopped coming to Camila’s inbox.

The hush around us changed.

Men who had watched me at dinners like I was a problem now watched me like I was a factor.

A variable they had to account for.

Life in the penthouse didn’t turn into a fairy tale after that. It just got… real.

Sofia turned eleven months old and started taking wobbly steps between furniture, her chubby hands slapping against tables and chairs as she lunged for whatever she wanted.

“She’s going to give me a heart attack,” Franco muttered one afternoon as she launched herself from the couch to his outstretched hands.

“She’s confident,” I said. “That’s good.”

He caught her and swung her up, his face all soft edges and pride.

“Hey, principessa,” he murmured, kissing her forehead. “You’re going to conquer this whole city someday, aren’t you?”

She laughed, a high, breathy sound that filled the room.

I watched them from the doorway, heart so full it almost hurt.

“We need to talk,” he said later, after we’d put her down for her nap. His tone had that same mixture of nerves and determination it had the night he’d told me about his mother dying in a car accident when he was sixteen.

“Talk,” I said, settling onto the couch.

He paced in front of the windows for a moment, Boston spread out behind him like a movie backdrop. Then he dropped to one knee in front of me.

Not like the first time he’d asked for something on a whim in a shadowed alcove. This time felt deliberate. Grounded.

“When I asked you to stay, it was supposed to be two weeks,” he said. “Then two weeks turned into months. You’ve built a life here with me and Sofia without me ever properly asking if that’s what you want. You deserve more than to just… drift into this.”

“Franco,” I started. “I’m here. I wouldn’t be if I didn’t—”

He pulled a small velvet box from his pocket and opened it.

The ring inside was simple. Classic. A single diamond set in platinum, nothing gaudy, nothing flashy. It fit me.

“Marry me,” he said. “Not because of Sofia. Not because it makes sense on paper. Because I love you. Because you walked into a chapel in Boston, heard my daughter cry, and changed both our lives without asking for anything in return. Because I don’t want a future that doesn’t include you.”

“This is objectively the worst timing,” I said, half laughing, half crying. “You’re proposing to a woman who already lives with you, in your penthouse, nursing your daughter.”

His eyes flickered with worry. “If that’s a no—”

“It’s a yes,” I said, my voice breaking on the word. “Obviously, it’s a yes.”

His exhale sounded like relief and disbelief tangled together. He slid the ring onto my finger with big, careful hands, then leaned in and kissed me.

This kiss wasn’t like the first one we’d shared, pressed up against the windows after an argument about leaving and staying. It wasn’t about desperation or fear. It was about something steadier.

Choice.

“I was afraid you’d wake up one morning and realize you could do better than a man with my history,” he admitted when we broke apart. “That you’d want someone whose business doesn’t come with security cameras and lawyers on speed dial.”

“I stopped looking for ‘better’ the night I held Sofia in that chapel,” I said. “This is where I’m supposed to be.”

We sat there on the couch with Boston humming outside, my ring catching the sunlight, his hand wrapped around mine, and for the first time since the hospital, the future didn’t feel like a black hole.

It felt like a road.

Messy, dangerous, complicated.

But a road we were walking together.

Later, when we checked on Sofia—sleeping with her stuffed animal tucked under her chin, lashes dark against her cheeks—Franco slipped an arm around my waist and pulled me close.

“She looks like Gabriella when she sleeps,” he said quietly. “But she has your calm now. Your gentleness.”

“She has your strength,” I said. “Your refusal to let anything break her.”

“We’re good for her,” he said. “Together.”

I believed him.

We weren’t perfect. He still had a foot in Boston’s shadows. I still had nights where grief for Emma ambushed me in the dark.

But when Sofia woke crying, there were two of us who came running.

When his world threatened to drag him back into the worst versions of himself, I was there to pull him toward something better.

When my past tried to convince me I didn’t deserve a second chance, he was there to remind me that love wasn’t a finite resource.

We’d both lost things we could never get back.

But in a chapel in Boston, under thunderclouds and stained glass, a baby had cried, and both our lives had changed.

And for once, the ending didn’t feel like loss.

It felt like the beginning of something we hadn’t even known we wanted.