Claimed By The Mafia Don (Ariella and Asher) novel Chapter 238

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ARIELLA

That broke me in a way I didn’t expect. I had seen Asher angry, proud, cold, protective, even ruthless, but never like this. Never so raw, so stripped down that he couldn’t even hide behind his walls anymore. His voice was trembling, his chest heaving with every word like it hurt.

I cupped his face, pulling his hands down so he couldn’t hide from me, forcing him to look at me even through his tears.

“No,” I whispered, my own voice cracking. “No, Asher. You didn’t let me down. You don’t get to say that. You came. You came when it mattered most. You saved me, you saved Leon. You never let me down.”

He shook his head against my hands, stubborn, broken, still drowning in guilt.

“I don’t deserve that forgiveness. Not after what I thought about you. Not after how I treated you. You carried that weight all by yourself, and I....” His voice caught, his throat tight. “.....I wasn’t there. I was the one person who should have been there, and I wasn’t.”

“You were,” I said firmly, my tears streaming, but my hands steady on him. “Maybe not in the way I wanted at the beginning, but you were always there. Even when you hated me, you still came. You still protected me. And now, when it mattered, you didn’t hesitate. That’s who you are, Asher. That’s the man you’ve always been, whether you want to believe it or not.”

His forehead pressed to mine, desperate, as though he wanted to crawl inside my words and hide in them, as though he needed them to breathe. His tears wet my cheeks, and mine wet his.

“I don’t know how to fix this,” he admitted, voice breaking. “I don’t know how to make it right.”

“You don’t have to fix anything,” I whispered back. “You just have to stay. Be here for us.”

He closed his eyes then, clinging to me like I was the last thing tethering him to earth. For once, the silence between us wasn’t sharp or cold; it was full of everything we didn’t know how to say but finally felt.

I don’t know how I stayed that way, tethered, like that, when a knock sounded. Then another. Begrudgingly, I was let go, and Luca walked in. Behind him, a little body peeped in, and then Leon shouted,

“Mom!”

Immediately, Leon ran into the room, crashing into me and his father.

His father…

I could barely catch my breath, watching Leon finally reunited with Asher. The love, the relief, the raw joy on both their faces, it was everything I had imagined when I thought about seeing Asher again. I knew it wasn’t under the right circumstances, but I guess the universe works in its own strange way.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Luca’s voice cut through gently. I turned toward him, holding Leon close, but Leon wasn’t looking at me. His whole attention was on Asher.

“Asher, we’ve got to talk,” Luca said.

There was a pause between the two of them. Asher nodded, then turned to me.

“I’ll be back,” he said softly.

He kissed my forehead, then Leon’s, before ruffling his head. Leon jiggled a little at the touch, giggling. Asher then walked out of the room. He adjusted himself and moved toward the door. But before he fully stepped through, he paused.

He turned around and watched us. He watched us as we watched him, and I smiled, a real smile. I wanted him to see the truth in me, the gratitude, the relief, the joy of this moment, of us, of him. In that instant, this was our tiny little family.