Claimed By The Mafia Don (Ariella and Asher) novel Chapter 214

And I wasn’t there.I wasn’t f***ing there. I missed it all.

Not because I left. Not because I disappeared. Not because I didn’t want to be a father. But because she never gave me the choice.

I clenched my jaw, fingers curling into a fist under the countertop.

Ariella.

I remembered that talk we had. The one where I told her I didn’t want to see “her son.” The kid she had while she was gone, the kid I thought belonged to someone else. I had been angry, bitter, maybe even cruel, but even then, even when I said I didn’t want to see him, she hadn’t said a damn thing.

Not one word.

Not one breath of truth.

She had let me walk away from my son. Let me live in ignorance. Let me hate a boy who shared my blood. She didn’t think I’d want to know?

She didn’t think I had the right?

What kind of person makes that decision for someone?

I stared at Leon, I couldn’t be mad at him. He was perfect. Innocent. He didn’t ask for any of this. But me?

I felt like a goddamn villain. Like the type of father I had promised myself I’d never become.

Absent. Unknowing. Irrelevant.

I wasn’t even a photo in his room. I hadn’t even been a face he knew until tonight. And now, five years later, I sit across from him with milk and cookies like that would fix it all..... And the guilt?

It chewed at me just as fiercely as the rage did.

Because I had said awful things to Ariella. Because I had believed she’d moved on and had another man’s child. The worst part was that with all the power in the world I couldn’t go back. I couldn't go back in time and fix it. Fix us.

I was so damn angry. Boiling. Raging. Torn apart inside. And I wanted to blame someone. No, I needed to blame someone. But I couldn't blame myself. Not this time.

I didn’t know.

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