I Picked A Blind Match Husband — My Adopted Brother Showed Up With A Bomb Chapter 07
The Truth
After Damien gets dragged off by Tommy and a swarm of guests for toasts, Marco sidles up to me.
I crack my knuckles. He flinches so hard he nearly drops his glass.
“Easy! Easy! I come in peace! I’m here to make up for everything. I got you a present, I swear!”
He pulls a thick envelope from inside his jacket and holds it out with both hands, face plastered with the most pathetic please-don’t-kill-me grin I’ve ever seen.
I raise an eyebrow and open it.
It’s a stack of crystal-clear photos.
Sophie Voss is wrapped around a man I’ve never seen before. She’s laughing, kissing him, and counting a fat stack of cash he handed her. The timestamps on every photo are months before she ever “rescued” Luca.
Beneath the photos is an amniocentesis report with the DNA results clearly spelled out.
The baby is not Luca’s.
Marco is practically vibrating next to me.
“So get this. Luca rushed to the hospital after Sophie’s little ‘contraction’ stunt, right? Turns out she was faking. Shocking, I know. The second Damien’s people fed me the intel, I had everything sent straight to Luca.”
“You should’ve seen his face. His face went white, then green, and he grabbed Sophie by the arm and dragged her to get the amnio done right there. Results came back in two hours.”
He leans in, grinning. “Not his kid. Never was. The whole thing, the rescue story, the pregnancy, the tears, was a con job from day one. She’s a professional. She targets rich men, gets knocked up by some nobody, then finds a mark to play daddy.”
“Luca lost it. He had his button men drag her out of the hospital and dump her back in whatever gutter she crawled out of.”
Marco pauses, and his grin turns into something colder.
“Last I heard, she’s got a lot of people looking for her now. Apparently she pulled this same trick on two other families before us, one in Jersey and one in Philly. Those people aren’t as forgiving as we are.”
He takes a sip of his drink. Casual.
“She won’t be a problem anymore.”
I don’t ask what that means. In this world, I don’t need to.
Marco clears his throat. “As for Luca, he couldn’t face you. Couldn’t face Dad. He went straight to the compound, knelt in the chapel for six hours, then asked Dad for permanent exile. Overseas. No return. Dad signed off before Luca even finished the sentence.”
Permanent exile. In our world, that’s a living death sentence. You keep your name, you keep your life, but you lose everything that makes either one worth having. No family. No territory. No home. You exist, but you’re already a ghost.
I sit there, flipping through the photos and the report.
Anger? Relief? Maybe both. But mostly I feel nothing. A strange, settled calm, like watching a storm break over someone else’s house.
The man I once would’ve burned the world for, along with everything he regrets, everything he’s lost, and everything he’s ashamed of, feels very, very far away now.
Damien comes back smelling faintly of whiskey. He drops into the seat beside me, his arm sliding around my shoulders like it’s the most natural thing in the world. His eyes sweep over the papers in my hands, then settle on my face.
“What’s the verdict? Feeling sorry for your third brother?”
I look up at him. Those fox eyes are searching, but patient.
I toss the envelope onto the table, then lace my fingers tightly through his.
“Feel sorry for him?” I lean into his chest, my voice lazy but firm. “I’ve got better things to do with my time, like feeling sorry for my husband. Poor thing had to play the playboy for years, bribe my brother, dodge seven guard dogs, and strap a bomb to his own chest just to marry me. Must’ve been exhausting.”
Damien goes still for half a second.
Then he laughs, low and warm, the sound vibrating through his chest and into mine. His arms tighten around me, and his lips press against the top of my head.
“Damn right it was.” His voice is soft and satisfied, the voice of a man who played the longest game of his life and won. “So you’d better make it up to me. Every single day. No refunds, no exchanges, no returns.”
“Marchetti family rule number one: once we pick someone, it’s for life.”
Outside the window, guests are still laughing and glasses are still clinking. The two Dons are trading stories like old men who’ve forgotten they run empires.
Inside, it’s quiet. Warm.
The betrayal, the madness, the bomb on the road, the girl with the fake belly and the real ambition, all of it is nothing more than dust in the wind now.
And the man holding my hand has been holding it since before either of us could walk.
I close my eyes.
For the first time in two years, I’m not waiting for anyone.
He’s already here.