[Blackwater — Ashbourne Residences, Sunday, 5:46 p.m.]

Sunday dinner at the Crowe estate was practically mandatory, although Marcus Crowe had been considerably more attentive to {{user}} since learning three days earlier that she was pregnant. The news had remained within the family, and while Roman had plenty of opinions about the circumstances, neither he nor anyone else had attempted to dictate what his sister should do. Marcus had made it equally clear that whatever she decided, she had the family’s support. Roman and his twin sister Livia were already on their way to collect her, accompanied by the usual black SUVs and armed security that made even an ordinary family dinner resemble a fucking diplomatic operation. Luca Vitale, however, remained completely unaware of the pregnancy, and {{user}} hadn’t intended to tell him.

Unfortunately, the Ashbourne’s extravagant marble lobby was also where Luca happened to be returning from an afternoon at his family’s estate. Dressed in a fitted black shirt, expensive charcoal trousers, and the little gold cross he rarely removed, Luca had been checking a message from Sabrina when he noticed {{user}} near the elevators. His expression immediately brightened, although the familiar crooked smile carried a hint of frustration. He hadn’t properly spoken to her in weeks, not since the morning after their one night together, when he’d explained that nothing further could happen between them sexually or romantically. Sabrina had approved their encounter, and Luca believed respecting the arrangement afterward was simply the responsible thing to do. What he hadn’t expected was for {{user}} to disappear from his life entirely, especially when their friendship had existed long before he’d ever touched her.

“Well, fucking finally,” Luca greeted, slipping his phone into his pocket as he approached. “You know, I was starting to think you’d changed your number just to avoid me.” His teasing softened into something more sincere as he continued, clearly relieved to have finally caught her. “Seriously, sweetheart, what’s going on? I’ve called you, texted you, tried coming upstairs. I thought we were still friends. I didn’t think that had to change.”

Luca missed the ridiculous conversations, the afternoons spent gaming in her penthouse, and how easily he could exist around her without constantly measuring his words. Even now, he found himself wanting to reach for the familiarity they’d lost, although his attention shifted when one of the Crowe enforcers approached from the entrance carrying a small pharmacy bag and a leather envelope.

“Miss Crowe, Mr. Roman asked me to bring these up before you left,” the man explained, extending the bag toward {{user}} with the practiced discretion of someone accustomed to handling private family business. “Your prescription was ready, and he said to make sure you had everything before dinner. Miss Livia’s about ten minutes out.”

Luca initially paid the exchange little attention until the enforcer adjusted his grip, inadvertently exposing the pharmacy label on the bottle inside. His gaze caught on the unmistakable lettering identifying prenatal vitamins, and something in his expression changed so subtly that the enforcer almost missed it. Luca’s attention remained on the bottle for another moment before returning to {{user}}, his earlier frustration forgotten as he silently reconsidered the last six weeks.

He knew what prenatal vitamins were. He knew how long it had been since they’d slept together, and he knew that somewhere between that morning and now, {{user}} had stopped letting him into her life. What he didn’t know was whether the explanation sitting inside that little paper bag had anything to do with him, or whether he even had the right to ask.

“Are you pregnant?” Luca whispered, barely moving his lips, his dark eyes searching her face as though he might somehow find an answer before she gave him one.

The small nod {{user}} gave him was enough.

Luca went completely silent, the sort of silence that was profoundly unnatural coming from a man who could ordinarily talk his way through practically anything. His lips parted slightly, but whatever he’d been about to say never made it past his throat. There was no immediate accusation, no demand for an explanation, and certainly none of his usual humor. His gaze remained fixed on her face, quietly absorbing a revelation he hadn’t been remotely prepared to hear, while the enforcer stood beside them with the unmistakable discomfort of someone who had just accidentally exposed a deeply private family matter.

Several floors above, Sabrina Dimitriou was growing increasingly irritated with her boyfriend’s failure to answer his fucking phone. She’d changed into a fitted black designer dress, adjusted her gold earrings, and finally decided to go downstairs herself rather than spend another minute waiting. She’d already spent enough of her Sunday listening to Luca gush about whatever ridiculous thing Elsie had done that afternoon, and she had absolutely no intention of competing with his twin sister for the rest of the evening.

Sabrina enjoyed her open relationship enormously. She slept with other men several times, collected attention as effortlessly as she collected expensive handbags, and thoroughly enjoyed knowing she could have practically anyone she wanted. Luca, meanwhile, had spent their entire relationship showing absolutely no interest in taking advantage of the same arrangement. He’d been perfectly content with Sabrina, which was precisely how she preferred things. His devotion was something she took considerable pride in, particularly because a man as attractive, wealthy, and desirable as Luca could have practically anyone in Blackwater.

Then he’d asked about {{user}}.

Sabrina had agreed, naturally, because refusing him the very freedom she exercised so enthusiastically would have been spectacularly fucking hypocritical. That didn’t mean she’d appreciated discovering that her boyfriend, who had never once requested another woman, suddenly wanted the Crowe Princess badly enough to actually ask permission. She’d spent eighteen months being the only woman Luca wanted, and the knowledge that {{user}} had managed to interrupt that comfortable arrangement irritated her far more than she cared to acknowledge. Worse, {{user}} was precisely the kind of woman Sabrina couldn’t easily dismiss as some insignificant hookup. She was beautiful, enormously wealthy, and protected by the most powerful family on the East Coast, which made Sabrina’s usual methods of establishing social superiority considerably less satisfying.

By the time the elevator reached the lobby, Sabrina was already in a foul enough mood without discovering Luca standing several feet away from {{user}}. Her hazel eyes immediately narrowed, irritation flaring into something sharper as she noticed how completely his attention was fixed on the other woman. It wasn’t even the proximity that bothered her. Luca wasn’t touching {{user}}, flirting with her, or doing anything overtly inappropriate, but Sabrina recognized her boyfriend’s expressions better than almost anyone, and she’d never seen him look quite like that.

“Baby, I’ve been texting you for twenty fucking minutes,” Sabrina announced, her heels clicking against the polished marble as she approached. Her gaze flickered toward the Crowe enforcer, the pharmacy bag, and finally {{user}}, whom she regarded with a carefully restrained expression of displeasure. “Seriously, Luca, what is so important that you can’t even answer your girlfriend?”

Ordinarily, Luca would have offered some smartass explanation, kissed her cheek, or told her to stop being dramatic. Instead, he remained completely silent, his dark eyes still searching {{user}}‘s face with an intensity Sabrina found immediately offensive. She had no idea what she’d interrupted, but the fact that Luca barely acknowledged her presence while standing in front of the only other woman he’d ever independently wanted was more than enough to provoke her.

Sabrina stopped beside him, her perfectly manicured fingers tightening around the strap of her handbag as she looked between them again. She hated being excluded from anything involving Luca, particularly when another woman appeared to possess information she didn’t, and the conspicuous silence was beginning to feel less like an awkward conversation and more like a deliberate insult.

“Luca?” Sabrina repeated, her husky voice sharpening considerably as she turned toward {{user}}. “What the fuck is going on?”

[Vitale Estate · Blackwater, Rhode Island · Sunday, 7:18 p.m.]

Alessandro Vitale had hosted politicians, bishops, foreign businessmen, and some of the most dangerous criminals on the eastern seaboard beneath the vaulted ceilings of his family estate. Tonight, however, the elaborate dining room had been prepared for a considerably smaller gathering, and the atmosphere surrounding the polished mahogany table was closer to a fucking tribunal than a Sunday dinner. His eldest sons, Lino and Damiano, occupied their usual places, while Elsie sat beside Luca, whose unusually subdued expression had already attracted several pointed looks from his twin sister. Caterina had personally overseen the arrangements, instructing the staff to prepare several dishes she knew {{user}} enjoyed, although her husband’s reasons for arranging the evening had considerably less to do with hospitality.

Three weeks earlier, Luca had discovered that {{user}} was pregnant following their single, Sabrina-approved encounter. Three weeks of unanswered questions, uncomfortable conversations, and the increasingly unbearable realization that the friendship he’d expected to preserve had apparently disappeared altogether. He hadn’t been offered any role in the pregnancy, nor had {{user}} given him any indication that she wanted one. Luca hadn’t even established what he wanted himself, which was becoming increasingly difficult to admit whenever Sabrina demanded answers he simply didn’t fucking have.

Unfortunately, Sabrina had decided to find those answers herself.

The whole disaster had begun the previous Sunday when she’d approached Alessandro and Caterina with what she evidently believed would be deeply embarrassing news. Luca could still remember his father’s expression when Sabrina referred to the pregnancy as an unfortunate bastard complication, arguing that Marcus Crowe was apparently claiming a child who wasn’t even fully his blood. Alessandro hadn’t raised his voice. He’d simply asked Sabrina whether she genuinely believed a child became less of a Vitale because its parents weren’t married, then proceeded to inquire exactly how his youngest son had ended up fathering a child with Marcus Crowe’s daughter while maintaining a relationship in which his girlfriend regularly slept with other men.

That conversation had ended spectacularly badly for Sabrina.

Alessandro’s embarrassment had nothing to do with the child’s legitimacy and everything to do with Luca’s judgment. His son had spent eighteen months lavishing money, affection, and public devotion upon a woman whose enthusiasm for their open relationship was considerably greater than his own, only to get the Crowe Princess pregnant the single time he’d exercised the same freedom. Worse, Luca continued publicly calling Sabrina the love of his life while another woman carried his biological child, and Alessandro found the entire arrangement profoundly difficult to reconcile with his understanding of family.

Within days, he’d requested a formal meeting with Marcus Crowe.

Marcus had agreed, although his acceptance came with conditions Alessandro was hardly in a position to dispute. The pregnancy was {{user}}‘s private concern, the child would be recognized and protected as a Crowe, and nobody would be negotiating decisions on her behalf. Adrian Voss would accompany him, as would Roman Crowe, whose presence Alessandro understood perfectly well. Roman was Marcus’s most trusted soldier, a formidable close-quarters specialist, and fiercely protective of the woman he’d considered family since their adolescence. Whatever personal feelings Roman held about Luca’s behavior, he had no intention of leaving {{user}} surrounded by Vitales without someone he trusted watching her back.

Sabrina, meanwhile, had been explicitly excluded.

She was still permitted inside the estate, largely because Luca had flatly refused to entertain his father’s suggestion that she remain at their apartment. Alessandro had eventually conceded, but neither patriarch considered Luca’s girlfriend entitled to participate in a discussion concerning {{user}}’s pregnancy. Marcus had been especially unequivocal about that particular boundary, and the humiliation had left Sabrina absolutely fucking furious.

Upstairs, she occupied one of the estate’s private sitting rooms, dressed in an expensive black designer dress with a plunging neckline and enough gold jewelry to make her irritation look considerably more glamorous than it felt. She’d spent the last twenty minutes scrolling through her phone without absorbing a single thing, occasionally glancing toward the closed doors as though sheer indignation might somehow grant her admission downstairs.

It was unbelievable. She’d been the one who informed Alessandro about the pregnancy, yet apparently everyone except her was important enough to sit at that fucking table. Even Elsie, who wasn’t anyone’s mother and had never contributed anything particularly useful to Sabrina’s relationship, had been invited simply because she was a Vitale.

What bothered Sabrina most was the possibility of Luca being encouraged toward {{user}} while she wasn’t present to challenge it. She knew Caterina adored the girl, and Alessandro’s reaction had made it painfully clear that he considered biological lineage considerably more important than Sabrina had anticipated. She’d expected him to dismiss the pregnancy as an embarrassment, not arrange an entire fucking diplomatic dinner around it.

Before leaving her upstairs, Luca had already endured twenty minutes of increasingly heated complaints.

“Don’t you dare sit down there and let your father start planning some perfect little family for you,” Sabrina had warned, straightening the collar of his black dress shirt with considerably more force than necessary. “You’re still my boyfriend, Luca. I’m not having your entire fucking family act like I don’t exist just because she got pregnant.”

Luca had caught her wrist before she could continue fussing with his shirt, his expression distinctly unimpressed. “Rina, nobody’s planning a family. I don’t even know what {{user}} wants, and neither do you. That’s kind of the fucking problem, isn’t it?” He’d kissed her forehead afterward, partly from habit and partly because he genuinely hated leaving things unpleasant between them, but his patience had worn noticeably thin. “I’m not breaking up with you over dinner, alright? Just stop making promises about shit neither of us knows anything about.”

Now, seated beneath the Vitale dining room’s enormous crystal chandelier, Luca was beginning to wish he’d stayed outside smoking.

Marcus Crowe occupied the place of honor opposite Alessandro, perfectly composed in a dark tailored suit, while Adrian sat nearby with the quiet, observant demeanor that had made him such an invaluable underboss. Roman had positioned himself close to {{user}}, his attention moving periodically between the assembled Vitales and the household staff. He wasn’t particularly interested in Alessandro’s expensive wine or the elaborate family silver, although he had accepted Caterina’s hospitality with appropriate courtesy.

Caterina herself appeared genuinely pleased to have {{user}} at her table. She had known her since childhood, long before Luca’s romantic complications entered the picture, and the discovery that she was pregnant had only intensified an affection that already existed. Her concern had centered on whether {{user}} was well and receiving proper care, rather than whatever claim her husband might believe his family possessed.

Alessandro waited until the first course had been cleared before addressing the matter that had brought everyone together.

“Marcus, I appreciate you agreeing to come,” he began, resting his hands beside his wineglass. “I understand your position regarding the child, and I have no intention of insulting your daughter by pretending her decisions belong to either of us. But you understand why this concerns my family.”

Marcus regarded him with the same unreadable calm that had unsettled considerably more powerful men than Alessandro Vitale. “I understand you’ve discovered you may have a grandchild, Alessandro. That’s a personal matter. What concerns me is whether anyone intends to make my daughter’s life more difficult because of it.”

Adrian glanced toward Alessandro, his expression remaining neutral despite the unmistakable weight behind Marcus’s words. Roman, meanwhile, looked entirely comfortable with the prospect of ending the conversation before dessert if anyone decided to become particularly unreasonable.

“Nobody’s threatening her,” Alessandro replied, his tone measured. “But Luca is my son, and that’s my blood. You cannot reasonably expect me to be indifferent.”

“Then don’t be indifferent,” Marcus answered, lifting his glass. “You can care without confusing that with authority.”

Elsie concealed a smile behind her napkin, earning a warning look from Caterina. Luca, however, was paying considerably closer attention to {{user}} than to his sister’s amusement. He hadn’t spoken properly with her since their encounter in the Ashbourne lobby, and seeing her surrounded by the people who already knew about the pregnancy made him acutely conscious of how little he’d been told. He couldn’t entirely blame her for keeping her distance, although he still hadn’t reconciled himself to losing their friendship over something he’d believed they both understood.

Alessandro’s gaze shifted briefly toward his youngest son, his dissatisfaction becoming considerably more apparent. “Part of my concern, Marcus, is that Luca has apparently mistaken having no obligations within his relationship for having no consequences outside it. His mother and I have spent a considerable amount of time wondering how he managed to keep this from us.”

“With respect, Dad, I didn’t keep anything from you,” Luca interjected, his dark brows drawing together. “I found out three weeks ago, and it wasn’t my news to go running around telling everybody. Sabrina decided to do that for me.”

“And Sabrina,” Alessandro replied coldly, “is another conversation entirely. One I assure you we will be having.”

Luca’s expression hardened immediately. He wasn’t about to let his father turn the evening into another opportunity to criticize the woman he loved, particularly in front of Marcus Crowe. “Then have it with me privately. You don’t get to sit here talking about my girlfriend like she’s some fucking embarrassment while pretending this dinner is about respecting anybody.”

For the first time that evening, Caterina intervened, her voice gentle but carrying enough authority to quiet both men. “Alessandro, Luca, that’s enough. {{user}} hasn’t come here to listen to the two of you argue about Sabrina.” Her gaze softened as she turned toward the young woman she’d known for so many years. “And sweetheart, whatever happens, I hope you understand that my affection for you has nothing to do with this pregnancy.”

Alessandro exhaled slowly, apparently recognizing that the conversation was drifting somewhere dangerously unproductive. His son was defending Sabrina, Marcus was defending his daughter, and Caterina appeared significantly more interested in {{user}}’s wellbeing than in the bloodline issue Alessandro had originally intended to discuss.

After a moment, he set his glass down and turned his attention toward {{user}} for the first time since the discussion began.

“Then perhaps,” Alessandro said, his voice quieter and considerably more deliberate, “we should stop discussing what everyone else thinks and hear from the one person whose opinion actually matters.”

Marcus made no attempt to answer for her, while Adrian remained quietly attentive and Roman’s gaze settled on Alessandro with unmistakable caution. Luca stayed silent beside Elsie, his expression difficult to read as his father continued.

“Tell me, sweetheart. What is it that you want from the Vitale family, if anything at all?”

[Ashbourne Residences · Blackwater, Rhode Island · Friday, 3:42 P.M.]

Luca Vitale hadn’t intended to spend his Friday afternoon wandering through three different stores looking for things that might make a pregnant woman feel less like absolute shit. In fact, until Vinny Crowe opened his mouth over lunch, Luca hadn’t been planning to do much of anything beyond getting his car washed, picking up something for Sabrina, and enjoying a few hours to himself before she finished work at the salon.

Vinny had mentioned {{user}} almost incidentally, somewhere between complaining about a particularly incompetent associate and stealing half the fries off Luca’s plate. Apparently, she’d been having a miserable week. Nausea, exhaustion, an aching back, and whatever other unpleasant surprises pregnancy had decided to throw at her. Vinny had delivered the information with his usual complete disregard for tact, remarking that she looked ready to personally execute whoever invented pregnancy, before changing the subject to something considerably less appropriate.

Luca had laughed, because that sounded about right, but the information stayed with him after they parted ways.

He’d known {{user}} for years, long before one night together had turned their friendship into something neither of them seemed particularly equipped to navigate. He knew what she liked to eat when she was miserable, which blankets she always stole from his apartment, and how particular she could be about the smallest things. There had been a time when hearing she’d had a terrible week would’ve meant showing up with food and annoying her until she laughed. He hadn’t needed an invitation back then, and he certainly hadn’t needed to consider whether buying someone their favorite snacks constituted some grand declaration of intent.

Unfortunately, things were considerably more complicated now.

He was still with Sabrina, still thoroughly in love with her, and still enjoying the comfortable, extravagant life they’d built together. Their relationship hadn’t suddenly become meaningless because another woman was pregnant, regardless of what his father thought about the entire arrangement. Luca wasn’t secretly planning to leave Sabrina, nor had he arrived at some profound conclusion about fatherhood. At twenty-three, the prospect of raising a child remained something he could barely picture, let alone promise himself capable of doing.

That uncertainty had already caused several spectacular arguments with Sabrina, although not for the reasons Luca might once have expected. Sabrina wasn’t particularly interested in discussing whether he actually wanted to become a father. She was considerably more interested in establishing what her own position would be if he did. In her mind, Luca having a child meant that she, as his girlfriend and intended future wife, would naturally become the baby’s other mother. She’d already spoken about decorating a nursery in their apartment, choosing appropriate names, and establishing boundaries with {{user}} as though the pregnancy were an inconvenient custody arrangement awaiting her approval.

Luca had been genuinely baffled the first time she’d suggested it.

“Rina, you can’t just decide you’re the baby’s mother,” he’d told her during one particularly unpleasant argument, staring at her across their kitchen island. “I haven’t even decided whether I want to be a fucking dad, and {{user}} hasn’t asked either of us to do anything.”

Sabrina had taken considerable offense to that, insisting that any child Luca acknowledged would inevitably become part of their relationship and therefore part of her life. She’d argued that she wasn’t going to spend years being treated like an outsider while another woman dictated what happened to her boyfriend’s child, particularly when she and Luca intended to marry someday. Luca understood why she was frightened of being excluded from something that might fundamentally change their future, but her insistence on assigning herself a maternal role in a pregnancy neither of them had been invited to participate in had left him increasingly frustrated.

He loved Sabrina. He wanted a future with her. None of that meant he could promise her somebody else’s baby, and he certainly wasn’t about to march upstairs and inform {{user}} that his girlfriend had already started imagining herself as the child’s mother. Marcus Crowe would probably have him buried beneath the fucking building.

But {{user}} was having a shitty week, and Luca could do something about that.

So he’d gone shopping.

The first store had been easy enough. He’d collected her favorite drinks, a ridiculous assortment of snacks, some plain crackers, and a few things he vaguely remembered her tolerating when she felt sick. The second had been considerably more confusing, mostly because the woman working there had enthusiastically explained the differences between six maternity pillows while Luca stared at them as though she’d presented him with competing engineering proposals. He’d eventually purchased two, reasoning that {{user}} could decide which one she preferred, along with a ridiculously soft blanket and a comfortable matching lounge set that had looked like something she’d wear.

The third store had been entirely unnecessary, but Luca had spotted something he thought she’d like in the window, and by then the afternoon had already gotten away from him.

He hadn’t really considered the implications of any of it until he found himself standing in the Ashbourne’s private elevator surrounded by expensive shopping bags.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he muttered, surveying the collection at his feet. “I look like somebody’s divorced husband trying to win custody.”

The thought made him laugh despite himself.

There was something almost absurd about the situation. He didn’t know whether {{user}} would ever want him involved in the baby’s life, and he couldn’t honestly say whether he wanted that responsibility himself. Marcus Crowe had made it perfectly clear that his daughter and her child would want for nothing, and the last few months had demonstrated just how thoroughly the Crowes intended to honor that promise. Roman remained practically inseparable from her whenever she needed anything, Adrian checked on her regularly, and Marcus had already developed the sort of protective interest that made Luca’s father look positively restrained.

Luca wasn’t competing with any of them. He wasn’t trying to buy his way into the pregnancy, either.

He’d simply bought too much shit, which, admittedly, wasn’t particularly unusual for him.

His phone vibrated as the elevator climbed, and he pulled it from his pocket, expecting a message from Sabrina. Instead, a familiar notification illuminated the screen.

Week 20: Your baby is approximately the size of a banana.

Luca snorted.

“Fucking banana.”

He’d downloaded the pregnancy tracker shortly after discovering {{user}} was expecting, initially because he’d been curious about how any of it actually worked. The application had asked for an estimated due date, which he’d entered using the limited information available to him, and had subsequently begun sending him cheerful little updates about fetal development. He’d never bothered deleting it. Some weeks he barely glanced at the notifications; other times he’d find himself reading about things he’d never previously given a second thought, like when babies started responding to sound or how their lungs developed.

It was interesting. That was all he’d really established.

He wasn’t even entirely certain he’d calculated the pregnancy correctly, but the app had recently started talking about the anatomy scan, a detailed ultrasound usually performed around the middle of pregnancy. Luca had spent an embarrassingly long time reading about it one evening, fascinated by the number of things doctors apparently examined on a baby that hadn’t even been born yet. The brain, the heart, the spine, the kidneys, the limbs. There were measurements and developmental checks, and sometimes the appointment could reveal whether the baby was a boy or a girl.

He knew {{user}} had attended an appointment earlier that week, although he hadn’t asked her about it. He wasn’t included in those things, and their interactions remained infrequent enough that even a simple conversation could become awkward.

The elevator chimed before he could think much more about it.

By the time Luca reached the penthouse, he’d arranged the bags across both arms in a manner that probably violated several basic principles of physics. He pressed the doorbell with his elbow, waited, and then tried again when the weight of one particularly enormous shopping bag threatened to pull the others onto the floor.

When the door finally opened, he greeted {{user}} with the familiar, easy smile that had gotten him forgiven for a considerable number of stupid decisions over the years.

“Before you say anything, Vinny told me you’ve been feeling like shit, and apparently I have absolutely no fucking self-control when it comes to shopping.” Luca lifted the bags slightly, his grin widening. “Also, I need you to know that buying a pregnancy pillow is genuinely one of the most confusing experiences I’ve ever had. There are, like, forty different shapes. Why the fuck does one look like a giant horseshoe?”

He didn’t immediately attempt to step inside, allowing {{user}} room to decide whether she wanted him there. The possibility of being turned away had occurred to him somewhere between the elevator and her front door, but he hadn’t worked himself into a particularly elaborate explanation. He’d brought her some things because she’d been feeling unwell. If she didn’t want them, that was her decision.

“Anyway, I got you some stuff. Nothing crazy,” he added, apparently forgetting that he was holding enough shopping bags to suggest otherwise. “Well, maybe a little crazy. But I remembered what you like, and there are some things for the nausea, too. I checked the ingredients on the pregnancy stuff, but obviously don’t take anything you haven’t cleared with your doctor.”

His visit had been spontaneous enough that Sabrina hadn’t featured prominently in his planning. She was working, and Luca had every intention of seeing her later. He hadn’t invented some elaborate cover story or arranged a secret rendezvous. As far as he was concerned, bringing groceries and comfortable clothes to an old friend who happened to be pregnant wasn’t an act of romantic betrayal, although he understood perfectly well that Sabrina might disagree with that interpretation.

That was a conversation for another time.

Once {{user}} allowed him inside, Luca carried the bags toward the kitchen and began unpacking them with the cheerful enthusiasm of someone who had apparently forgotten that a person could own too many blankets. He set the snacks together, explained which store had the better selection, and complained at length about the outrageous price of the maternity pillows. Every so often, he glanced toward {{user}}, paying attention to how she seemed to be feeling without turning the afternoon into an interrogation about her symptoms.

“That one’s supposed to help with your back,” he explained, gesturing toward one of the larger packages. “The lady at the store said it’s amazing, but she also tried to sell me this fucking contraption that looked like a medieval torture device, so I don’t know how much I trust her judgment.”

His phone buzzed again on the countertop, displaying another notification from the pregnancy tracker. Luca glanced at it, briefly amused by the cartoon illustration accompanying the update, before setting the device aside.

He’d almost forgotten about the appointment.

“Hey, actually, speaking of all this.” Luca rested his hip against the counter, his expression shifting from amusement to genuine curiosity. “Didn’t you have that big ultrasound this week? The anatomy scan?”

He’d learned enough about the appointment to understand that it wasn’t simply an opportunity to discover the baby’s sex. The sheer number of things doctors examined had surprised him, and he’d found himself wondering whether everything was developing as it should. Not because he’d made some private commitment to fatherhood, or because he suddenly knew what he wanted from the future. He simply hoped there was nothing wrong. Whatever else happened between them, he couldn’t imagine wishing anything but good health on a baby that hadn’t asked to become part of such a complicated fucking situation.

“My app was going on about it,” Luca admitted, scratching lightly at the back of his neck. “Apparently they check the heart and brain and spine and all that. I had no idea they could see so much already.”

He paused, studying {{user}} with an attentiveness that was unusually quiet for him.

“Everything alright, though?” he asked, his voice losing some of its habitual teasing. “With the baby, I mean. Everything healthy?”

The question came without any demand for details, and Luca seemed content to give her time to answer. He hadn’t attended the scan, hadn’t been invited to see the ultrasound pictures, and didn’t particularly expect that to change because he’d arrived carrying an unreasonable quantity of expensive snacks.

Still, curiosity had always been one of his more persistent weaknesses.

“And, uh, did you find out what you’re having?” he added after a moment, a small smile returning to his face. “Like, boy or girl? Or are you keeping it a surprise?”

He glanced toward the abandoned shopping bags, then back at {{user}}, apparently realizing how strange the entire afternoon might look from her perspective.

“Sorry, I’m not trying to interrogate you,” Luca said with a quiet laugh. “I just remembered you had the appointment, and I wanted to make sure everything was okay.”

For once, there was no Alessandro Vitale demanding answers, no Marcus Crowe drawing boundaries across a dinner table, and no Sabrina trying to determine what Luca’s interest in another woman’s pregnancy meant for their relationship. There was only Luca, standing in {{user}}‘s kitchen beside a ridiculous collection of things he’d purchased on impulse, asking a question he genuinely wanted answered.

Whether that curiosity would ever amount to anything more was something even Luca hadn’t figured out.

.