Chapter 4 - The Lion's Cub
The confession hit Dominic like a physical blow.
He staggered back half a step, releasing her hands. His vision blurred at the edges. *His children.* A son. A daughter. Flesh of his flesh, carrying the bloodline of five generations of Moretti rulers—growing up in foreign lands, eating dinner without him, learning to speak, to walk, to laugh, while he sat in an empty, bloodstained empire, rotting from the inside out.
"Why didn't you tell me?" Dominic whispered, the agony in his voice raw and bleeding. "Why didn't you send word? You knew I had resources. You knew—"
"I knew you were a monster," Natalie cut him off, her amber eyes burning with an ancient fire. "What was I supposed to do, Dominic? Come crawling back to the man who believed forged documents over five years of marriage? Come back to the penthouse where your secretary was warming your bed? So you could take my babies away and raise them in this cesspool of violence and lies?"
"I would never have taken them from you!"
"You would have had no choice!" Natalie stepped toward him now, jabbing a finger into his broad chest. "Your council would have taken them. Vanessa would have plotted against them. You were surrounded by wolves, Dominic, and you were the blindest wolf of all. I saved my children from you."
Before Dominic could answer, the bedroom door creaked open completely.
A tiny figure stood in the threshold.
Leo.
The little boy was dressed in navy-blue flannel pajamas printed with little yellow stars. He held a wooden toy train tightly in one hand. His dark brows were drawn together in a terrifyingly familiar line of authority.
"Mommy?" Leo asked, his voice steady despite his age. "Is this bad man bothering you?"
Dominic looked down.
Looking at the boy in the well-lit room was like staring into an antique mirror. The high forehead, the unruly black curls, the defensive stance—feet shoulder-width apart, shoulders squared. Dominic had stood the exact same way at four years old when his father had brought soldiers into their home.
Dominic slowly dropped to one knee, lowering himself until his eyes were level with the boy’s.
"Leo," Dominic said, his voice softer than any living soul had heard it in decades.
Leo didn't shrink back. He tightened his grip on the toy train, stepping directly in front of Natalie. "You made my mommy cry downstairs. You need to leave our room."
"Leo, sweetheart, it’s okay," Natalie murmured, her heart in her throat as she reached down to rest a hand on the boy’s curls.
"I didn't mean to make your mommy cry," Dominic said, his slate-gray eyes drinking in every detail of the boy’s face. A small scar near his temple, identical to the one Dominic got when he was seven. "I... I knew your mommy a long time ago, Leo."
"Are you the man from the pictures?" Leo asked suddenly.
Natalie froze. Dominic’s head whipped up to look at her, but she looked away, biting her lower lip.
"What pictures, Leo?" Dominic asked, his throat aching with unspeakable hope.
"The one Mommy keeps in her jewelry box," Leo said plainly. "Where she’s laughing in the snow. She cut your face out of the picture. But I found the other half in the trash can in London. I taped it together."
The air left Dominic’s lungs.
She had kept his picture. Even after the hatred, even after the exile, she had kept a fragment of him.
Just then, tiny footsteps padded across the floor.
Maya emerged from the bedroom, rubbing her hazel eyes with the back of a tiny hand, clutching a tattered velvet rabbit. She looked bewildered, her gaze wandering from her brother to Natalie, and finally settling on Dominic kneeling on the floor.
"Daddy?" Maya whispered sleepily.
The word shattered the last defensive walls around Dominic Moretti’s heart.
He didn't move. He didn't breathe. A single, hot tear escaped his eye, tracking down his scarred cheek.
"Maya, no," Natalie said quickly, her voice cracking as she rushed to scoop the little girl into her arms. "Baby, this isn't—"
"He has my eyes, Mommy," Maya mumbled into Natalie’s neck, pointing a small finger at Dominic. "You told me Daddy had eyes like rain."
Dominic buried his face in his hands for a fraction of a second, his massive shoulders trembling. When he looked up, the ruthless mafia don was gone. There was only a broken man kneeling before the family he had thrown into the dark.
May you like
"Natalie," Dominic rasped, looking up at her from his knees. "Please. Don't run from me again. I will tear this city apart with my bare hands if I have to, but I am not letting you disappear."
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