Lorenzo: Chapter 72

Hands stuffed in the pockets of my suit pants, I stand in the hallway watching her. So fucking beautiful.

“You know this is supposed to be girls only, right?” Max walks up beside me, bumping my arm before he stops and stares too, watching my sister the same way I watch Mia. We stand here in silence, each of us transfixed. I swear Mia’s smile could light up the entire city. My sunshine.

“I knew this is where you two would be,” Dante says with a roll of his eyes as he comes up on my other side, cradling his sleeping son in his arms. “Can’t stay away, huh?”

“Well, you might be an old hand at this, but it’s kind of new for us,” I remind him.

“Never gets old though, bro,” he replies with a genuine smile as he stares at his wife.

Max turns and looks at my younger brother, cocking one eyebrow. “Surely you’re not going to make that poor woman have any more of your giant babies after this one?”

Dante flashes him a grin. “I want at least one more.”

“You want five kids?” I ask.

“I want six, but Kat says five, so…” He shrugs.

“What about you, Loz? Will this be the first of many?” Max asks me.

I stare at Mia. Her face glows with such joy that I wonder how I ever got so lucky. Pregnancy looks good on her, but we’ve already agreed on our number. “One more,” I reply.

“Joey says she’ll wait to see how much of a tiny demon our first one is before we decide on more.” Max laughs.

I glance at my sister, hand resting protectively on her swollen belly and her eyes shining with joy. “She may change her mind. She’s young.”

Dante snorts. “If your daughter is anything like her though …”

Max’s eyes widen with horror. “Fuck. I’m never gonna know a second’s peace again, am I?”

“You wouldn’t have it any other way,” Dante replies with a grin. Kat is pregnant with their fourth child and despite our father being a monster, my younger brother has taken to fatherhood like he was born for the role. I only hope that it comes as naturally to me. “So, which baby do you think is going to arrive first?”

Mia, Joey, and Kat fell pregnant within weeks of one another, hence the three-way baby shower currently being held in our mansion. Our dining room is full of thirty giggling, excited women and my fiancée outshines every single one of them.

“Mine and Joey’s,” Max replies instantly. “She’s due first.”

Dante laughs. “First babies never arrive when they’re supposed to, compagno.”

“They don’t?”

Dante shakes his head.

I blow out a breath at the reminder that I’m going to be a father in a few weeks. And an uncle to two more babies. Joey and Max have their own wing in the house now too. And call me sentimental, but I like all of us Morettis being under one roof. “We’re gonna have three newborns under one roof.”

Dante puts an arm around my shoulder, cradling his son with the other. “You’re going to be an amazing dad.”

“What if I’m not?”

Max bumps my arm again. “When have you ever not been good at anything?”

At that precise moment, Mia looks up and catches my eye. She flashes me one of her beautiful smiles, the kind that she reserves only for me. Love you, she mouths.

I swallow the words on the tip of my tongue. She knows I love her. Everybody knows. Max wraps an arm around my shoulder now too. “I’m so fucking proud of you,” he says quietly, but loud enough that Dante hears him and he squeezes my other shoulder.

I’m proud of me too. After Anya died, I thought there was no life for me at all. I certainly didn’t imagine I would experience any of this. There was no doubt in my mind that there could be no one else for me. And then I met my Mia. A woman who’s impossible not to fall in love with. There’s only so long you can stand in the sun before succumbing to its heat. I’m not sure anyone else could have melted my ice-cold heart the way that she has. And now she’s giving me a son too. She is fucking everything.