Page 23 of Modern Romance December 2025 5-8

She leaned forward and rested her forehead on his shoulder. “I… I would be crushed if you walked away now. And not just because you’re a powerful, arrogant billionaire who can arrange the world just so for me right now.”

He laughed, his breath hitching at the soft graze of her body against his. How could this fragile woman be so strong? “Flattery will get you everything.”

“Tell me, please. I don’t want secrets between us when it comes to…him. Or how we feel about this whole parenthood thing. Like you said, we’re doing the best we can, and there’s no script for this. No right or wrong way to feel.”

“I haven’t seen him yet,” he admitted, a hundred emotions coursing through him. But none that he could hold on to. He felt like he was constantly caught up in a river current, barely staying afloat. “Everything I told you, I was simply repeating what Massimo told me.”

“Why didn’t you see him, Renzo?”

He kept his eyes averted from her, not wanting to telegraph something he didn’t have under control. “You were unconscious, and it felt unfair that I see him first when you were the one who carried him all these months and cared for him. So I asked Massimo to tell me. He seems excited that he’s not the baby of the family anymore.”

She tugged his chin up, and the smile blooming on her face was…so brilliant that it should have blinded him. “Shall we go now and see our son?”

He laughed and drew her closer. As if they had gone through the same ritual a thousand times, she tucked her head under his chin and wrapped her arms around his waist.

Renzo felt the desperate need to kiss her again. To taste her sweetness and her desire andher…just one more time.

He beat back the urge. Their relationship was supposed to be built on trust and mutual respect, not his hunger for her. Yes, he was attracted to her, and that would only make their marriage pleasant. Maybe become part of their foundation too. But he couldn’t become a slave to his own needs and mess this all up. He couldn’t let anything but rationality rule his head.

“Sì, we should. But the nurses will have to check you first. They worried that your blood pressure was too low earlier. You fainted when they tried to get you to sit up to go to the bathroom.”

She turned her face up to him and scrunched her nose. “Please tell me I didn’t embarrass myself.”

He sifted his fingers through her tangled hair. A soft groan escaped her chapped lips, sinking deep into his flesh. “Even if you had, it’s okay.” Tenderness engulfed him. “Did you have a name for him in mind?”

She tensed immediately, and he stroked his palm down her back. The need to soothe away every ache from her—whether it was of body or mind or heart—engulfed him.

He had always been the one to take charge of his family affairs, even though Santo had been older. From ordering their father to control his unending flings to making sure their sister married the man she loved, to taking charge of their dying hotel conglomerate and growing it to the billion-dollar luxury resort empire it was today…he had taken control of all of it.

Not once had he bemoaned the duties that fell to him.

Then why should this overwhelming need to relieve his new wife’s burden be anything different? Especially since he’d already decided that this marriage would be as real as he could make it between them. She was under his protection, and his patterns were far too deep-rooted to deny them now.

“It’s your call, Mimi. Whatever you decide, I’m okay with it.”

He felt her shuddering exhale, her slender body swaying in his arms. Her words were a muffled whisper against his chest. “They wanted to call him Luca if it was a boy. It was one of the few things they immediately agreed on.”

He tightened his arms around her, grief twisting his stomach. This day would have been so different if Santo and Pia had been alive. And yet he couldn’t imagine a different reality.

Did it make him a selfish bastard that he didn’t want to?

“You like it?” he said, clearing his throat. There was no point in letting the ghosts of the past dictate their lives now.

“I do,” she said simply.

“Luca it is then,” he said.

She burrowed deeper into him, chanting their son’s name over and over again.

CHAPTER SIX

Mimi hated theidea of leaving the close-by hotel when Luca had to stay in the hospital.

Her suite at a nearby DiCarlo hotel, which was a two-minute walk, was close to paradise.

But it was nearly a month since Luca had been born. The team of doctors had assured Renzo that her own medical needs had been stabilized and that she should continue recuperating in amore restful and comfortable environment.

Although she thought it was Renzo who wanted her in a more comfortable environment.