The Don Chose His Mistress, So I Chose His Enemy novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Seven Pounds

Paola held the baby against her chest in both arms and looked at me over the blanket.

She had cried herself out, and what was left was a calm I had never seen on her.

"She has Renato's mouth," she said. "God help her."

"She has your hands."

Paola looked down, and a smile broke across her face, small and astonished.

"Do you want to hold her?" she asked.

I stood very still.

Twenty-one months ago, I had held a baby for the length of one breath, and then they had taken him away.

I had not held one since.

"Yes," I said, and it came out cracked.

She put the bundle in my arms, and the weight of it went through me.

The baby's eyes were shut and her fist was curled against her cheek.

I breathed her in.

I did not forgive anyone in that moment, and I did not stop grieving.

But the small hard thing that had lived under my ribs since the funeral shifted a little, and let some air in.

"Thank you," Paola whispered.

"Don't."

"I'm leaving Chicago," she said. "Not Naples. My mother's cousin has a house in Hammond, near the clinic."

"That's twenty minutes from the safe house in Gary."

"Yes. I'll tell the baby the truth when she's old enough to ask." She wiped her face. "Giulia, I don't want anything from you but the treatments, and I'll pay them back."

"You'll pay me back by raising her to be nobody's tool."

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