Chapter 5 - Echoes in the Blood
Carmine stopped breathing.
He looked down at the two children standing before him. The resemblance was so absolute, so undeniable, that it hit him like a physical blow to the chest. There was no escaping it, no denying the genetics carved into their faces.
"Are you... are you our dad?" Clara asked bluntly, tilting her head exactly the way Carmine did whenever he confronted an impossible problem.
Carmine’s knees felt weak—a sensation he had not experienced since he was a child holding a weapon for the first time. He dropped slowly to one knee, bringing himself down to their eye level, ignoring the damp grass staining his trousers.
"What are your names?" he asked, his voice cracking slightly.
"I'm Leo. This is Clara. Who are you?" the boy asked, stepping protectively in front of his sister with a fierce scowl that looked terrifyingly familiar.
Carmine looked up past them, his dark gaze meeting Mara’s tear-filled eyes.
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"I'm restoration, Leo," Carmine whispered, a broken smile touching the corners of his mouth. "I'm a man who came back to fix something he broke."
Mara walked over, her hand resting gently on Leo’s shoulder. She looked down at Carmine, seeing the profound, aching shift in him. The empire of blood and fear was gone. The man kneeling in front of her was no longer a mafia boss hiding in a penthouse; he was a father who had just discovered what he had been fighting for all along.
