His Ruthless Redemption (Isabella and Dominic) novel Chapter 13

Chapter 13

Dominic’s POV

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The moment Eduardo walked into my office, I knew. He carried a manila folder in his hand, thin but heavy in the ways that mattered. His face confirmed what my instincts had already decided.

“Tell me,” I ordered.

Eduardo set the file on my desk with deliberate care. “We ran it three times. To be certain.”

I stared at the folder like it was a live bomb. Because it was. My heart pounded behind my ribs almost

violently as I waited for Eduardo to tell me the truth I’d known all along.

“Mateo Bianchi,” Eduardo continued evenly, “is Mateo Russo.”

Silence reigned in the room after his statement.

I opened the file slowly, fingers steady only because rage and relief counterbalanced one another. There were photos, medical history, digital copies of birth records, and genetic results.

99.98% match.

Father- Dominic Alberto Russo.

I felt the hit like a bullet.

My son.

Something inside me locked into place, a truth so absolute, denial couldn’t survive it.

It was not a possibility. Not a suspicion.

Not a ghost of a life that might have been. It was the truth, raw and unyielding.

I had a child. A living, breathing child who laughed like he owned the world. Who existed without me learning his first word, without me seeing his first step, without me hearing him call me Papa.

Five years of moments I would never get back.

My throat burned. I shut the folder because I couldn’t look at it anymore, and because I would never stop looking if I didn’t.

“She knew,” I said. The words were low, lethal.

Eduardo didn’t answer.

“She knew.” My anger surged upward suddenly like a wildfire. “She carried my child, she gave birth to my child, and she disappeared.”

21:43 Wed, Jan 14 d.

Chapter 13

There were a thousand knives behind that truth. Isabella’s tearful confession the night she told me she was pregnant came to my mind, my own cold voice refusing to believe her, pushing her away.

She must have thought I would do something unspeakable. She must have thought she had to run.

And God help me, she wasn’t wrong.

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Rage for myself, rage for her, rage for that terrified woman who thought she had nowhere safe to go bubbled in the pit of my stomach.

“I drove her to this,” I muttered, pressing my fingers hard against my brow. “And she kept him alive. She raised him better without me than I ever could have with her back then.”

It was the truth, and I tasted bitterness admitting it.

Eduardo shifted his stance. “What do you want to do?”

What I wanted was to hold my son. To hear his voice. To protect him. To undo every mistake that had poisoned the past.

What I needed was to make sure no one touched them. Not my enemies. Not my world. Not even me, not the version of me who had made her run in the first place.

“I want them back,” I said. “Both of them.”

And hell or blood wouldn’t stop me this time.

I stood, straightening my jacket like armor. “I need to see him. Them. Both of them.”

Eduardo nodded, already moving.

I looked down at the folder once more. At Mateo’s face, so like mine it hurt, gazing up from a candid school photo.

A small handprint on the page next to his drawing assignment. The teacher had written- Mateo loves rockets and wants to go to the moon someday.

My chest twisted.

“I wasn’t there,” I whispered. “But I will be now.”

My son would know me. And Isabella, she would face me again.

Not as the man I was, but as the man I would become for them.

I closed the file.

And vowed to never let either of them slip from my hands again.

***

21:43 Wed, Jan 14

Chapter 13

Isabella’s POV

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