Chapter 2 - The Billionaire’s Desperation
The rain continued to hammer against the pavement, but inside the sudden vacuum of sound, the world seemed to narrow down to the space between the iron gate and the grand stone steps.
Matteo Varric stood frozen, his chest rising and falling in rapid, shallow breaths as the infant in his arms let out another high-pitched, exhausted squeal. The baby—little Nico, barely two months old—was turning a dangerous shade of mottled red, his tiny body stiffening as if fighting an invisible enemy.
“He hasn’t stopped screaming in fourteen hours,” Matteo said, his voice stripped of its usual iron authority, cracking with a raw, humiliating vulnerability that he hadn't shown another living soul in years. He took three long strides down the remaining steps, ignoring the driving rain soaking through his trousers, stopping just three feet away from the iron bars. “Every nurse we’ve hired from Boston’s top agencies has quit or been fired within forty-eight hours. The pediatricians say he’s colicky, that it’s reflux, that it’s just a phase. But he’s starving himself to death.”
Liana looked at the baby’s pale, sweat-slicked forehead and the frantic way his tiny mouth searched the air, rooting blindly against Matteo’s shirt. Her maternal instincts—still raw and bleeding from her own unbearable loss—flared with blinding clarity.
“He’s not colicky,” Liana said firmly, her voice steadying as she met the mafia boss’s dark, intimidating gaze head-on. “He’s terrified. And he has trapped gas pressing against his diaphragm because whoever has been feeding him is holding him flat like a sack of flour instead of cradling his head at a thirty-degree angle.”
One of the guards snorted derisively. “Boss, don’t listen to this vagrant. She’s probably a professional grifter casing the estate.”
Matteo didn't blink. He didn't look at his guard. His eyes remained locked on Liana’s face, scanning her soaked gray coat, her pale, gaunt cheeks, and the old, battered suitcase resting in the mud. He saw the dark shadows beneath her eyes—shadows that mirrored his own exhaustion.
“You have a suitcase,” Matteo noted, his voice low and dangerous. “You came here looking for shelter.”
“I came here looking for work,” Liana corrected him, lifting her chin. “And I heard a child who needed help. Open the gate.”
A tense, agonizing silence stretched across the courtyard. The guards held their breath, waiting for the inevitable order to chase the beggar away into the storm.
Instead, Matteo raised his hand. “Stand down.”
“Boss—” the first guard started.
“I said, stand down,” Matteo repeated, every syllable dropping like a heavy stone.
He reached out with his own trembling hands, unlatched the heavy brass lock of the iron gate himself, and pushed it open wide.
“If you’re a thief, you picked the wrong house,” Matteo said, his voice dropping into a harsh whisper as Liana stepped across the threshold. “And if you’re lying about knowing what to do with him... I will personally throw you back into the street.”
Liana didn't answer his threat. Her entire world narrowed down to the bundle in his arms. Without waiting for an invitation, she reached out, her gentle, practiced hands sliding beneath the baby’s back and supporting his heavy, lolling head with expert precision.
She pulled Nico against her chest, right over her aching, swollen breast.
The moment the baby felt the soft, familiar contour of a woman’s arms and caught the natural, maternal scent radiating from her skin, a miraculous thing happened.
The screaming stopped.
Nico hitched a ragged breath. His tiny, bruised fists uncurled. He let out a soft, confused whimpering sound, turned his face directly into the crook of Liana’s neck, and began to root desperately against her damp gray coat.
A heavy, stunned silence fell over the courtyard. The guards stared as if they had just witnessed a sorcerer perform a dark ritual.
Matteo stood completely motionless, his hands hovering mid-air where his son had been just a second before. His dark eyes darted from the quiet baby back to Liana’s face, the color draining entirely from his cheeks.
“How...” Matteo whispered, his voice catching in his throat. “How did you do that?”
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Liana didn't answer right away. She closed her eyes, rocking gently from side to side on the wet stone, feeling the miraculous, grounding warmth of a baby breathing against her body once more. Her own milk began to let down, a warm, tingling rush spreading through her chest that brought a sharp, bittersweet tear to her eye.
“He wasn't crying because he was sick,” Liana whispered, her voice thick with unshed emotion as she looked up at the terrifying, powerful man standing before her. “He was crying because he missed his mother. Just like I missed mine.”
