Page 2 of Modern Romance December 2025 5-8

Not Santo’s.As everyone would have assumed, since she was the surrogate mother for Pia’s baby.

A laugh burst through his mouth, filling the car with echoes of bitterness.

He was the father of the child that Mimi Shah was carrying—a secret only he and Santo had known. His brother had begged him to donate his sperm for their next IVF treatment, desperate to give Pia the child she wanted. Desperate to make one grand attempt at saving his marriage.

It hadn’t mattered much to Renzo.

He was not a man who had ever felt particularly paternal. Maybe that came from having a father who was the epitome of selfish desires and indulgences. Or maybe because he’d carried too many responsibilities from a young age. Or perhaps, having been burned by Rosa, the girl he’d loved once, and having seen too many unbalanced relationships around him, he could never trust a woman to share his life in a way that would enrich it.

He’d happily donated his sperm because the child, whether it was carried by Pia or her stepsister, Mimi, would belong to Santo. And because a baby would bring happiness to Santo and maybe contentedness to Pia. Even his mother, he knew, had hoped for the latter.

Now Santo was gone, and Pia was gone, and her stubborn stepsister, Mimi, who had agreed to be their surrogate, was carrying his child.

Imagine his shock when the world-class fertility clinic director had reached out to him about the defaulted payments for the IVF treatment—it was just like his brother to forget people needed to be paid—and sent him all the paperwork that entailed.

He had paid for the past multiple rounds of extraction and the IVF and discovered a small discrepancy in the records.

Imagine his shock when he grilled the clinic director, exerting all his considerable influence, and discovered that his sister-in-law, Pia, hadn’t even gone through the last round of extraction, but that it had been her stepsister, Mimi.

So now, Mimi, the woman he didn’t like for reasons he didn’t understand, and who didn’t like him either, he was pretty sure, was carrying his child.

And while she hadn’t known it was his and not Santo’s, she had kept the pregnancy a secret for several months.

Cristo, he hated lies and manipulations and mind games. He’d had enough of them with their father and sometimes his entire family. But the fact of the matter was that whether he’d wanted a child or not, he was having one.

Soon.

And he couldn’t let the status quo stand.

He got out of the car, knowing he was about to change both their lives in ways they couldn’t even imagine.

But he wasn’t his father. He didn’t neglect his responsibilities, even if they were thrust on him by a cruel twist of fate.

This child was a DiCarlo.

Mimi Shah stared at the man standing on her doorstep, one shoulder pressed against the frame as if he expected the door to be shut in his face and was not taking any chances.

If she didn’t despise drama with every cell in her and if she hadn’t been prepared for him, she’d have done just that.

Renzo DiCarlo, the famous hotelier billionaire of Venice, had finally found her.

The man had always made her skin prickle—sometimes in anger and sometimes in undeniable attraction that she had managed to hide. In the six years of Pia and Santo’s marriage, Renzo had always made it clear that her stepsister, their family, and Mimi were all nuisances he was putting up with for his brother’s sake.

Panic uncoiled in her stomach like a snake unfurling from its nest. Perhaps that was an exaggeration aided and abetted by her wonky hormones, but not by too much.

Her hand automatically drifted to her belly, and his haughty gaze followed the gesture. It made her look defensive, she realized too late.

One thick eyebrow rose in a challenge, even as he somehow very elegantly draped himself over the doorframe without actually stepping foot inside.

Every hackle that Mimi possessed rose.

She wasn’t foolish. She had imagined this very particular scenario a hundred times over the past few months. And here, she had been foolish. She had thought herself ready to face him and all that would follow.

With one mobile brow, he upended her hard-won composure and her resolve to stay calm and collected. Refusing to engage in his mind games, she moved away from the door without issuing an invitation.

His sudden laughter behind her made the small hairs on the nape of her neck prickle. Something loose and warm trickled through her veins, like the cork had been let out of a fizzy drink.

She rubbed her belly again, this time as a comforting gesture for herself. God, the last thing she needed right now was to still be attracted to this man. It would be like kneeling in the middle of a battleground and bowing her head to the enemy.