The Mafia Boss Told His Pregnant Wife to Take Any Child Who Wanted Her, Then All Four of His Heirs Stood Up at Once

Damon hesitated on the porch mat, looking down at his snow-covered boots.

"My boots are dirty," he said softly, a phrase that had never once crossed his lips in his life.

"Take them off," Eliza said, stepping back to leave the doorway open.

Damon unlaced his heavy boots, leaving them neatly by the door alongside Wyatt’s and Micah’s. He stepped into the warm, timber-scented hallway in his socks, looking strangely smaller, stripped of his corporate armor.

In the living room, the four children stood up.

The tension in the air was thick enough to cut with a blade.

Micah crossed his arms, his posture defensive. Wyatt stood calmly near the hearth. Delaney watched her father with a cool, searching gaze, while Phoebe shifted nervously behind Eliza.

Damon looked at his children—the four people he had raised under the assumption that discipline and fear were the only ways to keep them safe.

"I brought groceries," Damon offered lamely, pointing toward the bags he had left on the porch earlier. "Fresh milk. Oranges. The bread from the bakery in town."

"Dad," Wyatt said softly. "Sit down."

Damon walked into the living room and sat carefully on the edge of a plain wooden chair near the fire, holding his damp hands over his knees to warm them.

Eliza sat in her wingback chair, pulling her wool blanket over her legs.

"Why are you here, Damon?" Eliza asked gently. "Rusk is in federal custody facing attempted murder and fraud charges. The story has died down in the papers. You could go back to Westchester."

"There is nothing in Westchester," Damon said, looking at the stone floor between his feet. "I sat in that house for three days after the funeral. I walked through the rooms. I realized... I realized I built a prison and called it a palace."

He raised his eyes, looking first at Wyatt, then at Delaney, Micah, and Phoebe.

"I was terrifying to you because I was terrified," Damon confessed, his voice trembling slightly. "When your mother left thirteen years ago, she took everything I believed about loyalty and threw it in my face. I promised myself I would never let anyone hurt me—or you—again. So I took control of everything. Your schools, your money, your lives. I turned myself into a wall."

He looked at Eliza, tears shining in his dark eyes.

"And when I saw those hospice logs with your name on them, Eliza... I didn't see the truth. I saw Celeste all over again. I saw the person I loved most in the world betraying me. And I let my fear destroy the only real thing I had left."

The room remained quiet, save for the crackle of the logs in the hearth.

Phoebe took a small step forward. "Did you really build the crib yourself?"

Damon looked up, startled. A faint, sad smile touched his lips. "I spent four hours trying to read those terrible instructions. I put the back panel on upside down twice. Eliza laughed at me until she cried."

Phoebe looked at Eliza, then back at her father. "She told us about that. She said it was the first time she saw you laugh, too."

Damon swallowed hard, wiping his eye with the back of his hand. "I haven't been a good father. I don't know if I know how to be a good father without an order to give or a check to sign. But I want to learn. If you'll let me."

Micah looked at his brothers and sisters, then stepped forward, grabbing a dry towel from the linen rack and tossing it to his father.