Hours Before Proposing to Another Woman, the Mafia Boss Met Four 6-Year-Old Boys in a Bathroom—Then He Saw His Own Eyes Looking Back at Him

Hours before Dominic Moretti was supposed to ask another woman to become his wife, four six-year-old boys walked into his life and destroyed every plan his family had made for him.

He did not know their names. He did not know where they lived. But the moment the first child turned around beneath the soft amber chandeliers of Bellamy House, Dominic knew something far more dangerous.

The boy had his eyes.

Boston was glowing beneath an early autumn sunset when Dominic stepped from the black sedan outside Bellamy House, one of Back Bay’s most discreet restaurants. At thirty-seven, Dominic had become a man people noticed without appearing to look at. Six feet two. Broad shoulders beneath an immaculate cream suit. Dark hair pushed back from a face that rarely betrayed what he was thinking. Dark ink disappeared beneath the cuffs of his navy shirt and climbed the left side of his neck—a silent testament to years spent operating in rooms polite society pretended did not exist.

There were prettier men in Boston. Friendlier men, certainly. But very few men who could enter a room and make conversations grow quieter without saying a single word.

The Moretti name did that.

His grandfather had arrived in Massachusetts with almost nothing. Three generations later, the family controlled shipping docks, construction syndicates, luxury properties, and enough unofficial influence that Dominic had learned early never to ask how certain doors opened. Some things were better understood without being spoken aloud.

Tonight, however, none of that power mattered.

At 7:30, Dominic was expected at the Moretti conservatory overlooking the Charles River. Sloane Barrett would be waiting. Sloane was the daughter of a federal judge with old-money lineage—the perfect social shield for a family whose past was coated in gunpowder and shadows. Both families had arranged every detail. Inside Dominic’s breast pocket rested a velvet box containing a seven-carat emerald-cut diamond his mother, Victoria Moretti, had personally selected.

He touched the outline through the fine fabric.

Nothing. No excitement. No nervous anticipation. Nothing a man ought to feel before asking a woman to spend her life with him.

His phone vibrated against his hip. *Victoria Moretti.* Dominic declined the call with a flick of his thumb. He had forty-seven minutes before his driver needed to pull up to the estate. Enough time for a neat scotch and enough silence to convince himself that marrying Sloane was simply the cost of doing business. Love had nothing to do with it.

He had tried love once. That had nearly killed him.

Dominic entered the restaurant, nodded to the manager who bowed with deferential haste, and headed toward the private lounge at the rear. He never reached it. Halfway down the wood-paneled corridor, he noticed his left cufflink was slightly crooked. It irritated him more than it should have. He stepped sideways through a heavy oak door into the men’s room.

Warm golden light reflected from polished Italian marble. Black stone counters ran beneath towering beveled mirrors. Somewhere behind him, water trickled softly into a decorative basin. Dominic raised his hands to adjust the silver knot.

Then he saw them in the reflection.

Four children.

For half a second, Dominic assumed he had walked into a private family suite by mistake. Then one of the boys turned around.

He wore a pale blue cable-knit sweater over an open-collared white shirt, crisp khaki trousers, and a navy bow tie. His brothers were dressed almost identically, except their sweaters were cream, sage green, and dusty rose.

Dominic frowned. Quadruplets.

The boy in blue stood on his toes, gripping the edge of the stone sink to inspect his reflection. Then he did something peculiar. He raised his right hand, pushed his unruly dark hair backward, tilted his head slightly to the right, and reached his left hand behind his neck to massage the base of his skull.

Dominic forgot about his cufflink. His hands fell dead to his sides.

It was an insignificant gesture. Meaningless to anyone else in the Commonwealth. But Dominic had done that exact sequence since he was seven years old whenever his mind was racing. His father had teased him about it until the day he was buried.

Beside the first boy, the child in cream and the child in sage green mirrored the movement in unison, laughing softly amongst themselves.

Dominic stared.

The boy in blue caught Dominic’s gaze in the glass. He stopped laughing. He turned slowly on his heel to face him.

Everything inside Dominic Moretti went utterly, terrifyingly still.

The eyes were impossible. Dark brown, bordered by thick, dark lashes, absorbing the light like obsidian. The sharp cut of the jaw, still rounded by childhood but bearing the distinct square edge of the Moretti bloodline. The heavy, aristocratic eyebrows. Even the slight, brooding crease between them as the child sized him up.

Dominic had seen that face before. In silver-framed photographs taken in 1995.

It was his own childhood staring back at him.

The second boy turned. Then the third. Then the fourth. Four identical sets of eyes—his eyes—locked onto him.

Dominic Moretti had sat across tables from men who had held guns beneath tablecloths. He had survived an armored limousine being rammed off a rain-slicked highway in Rhode Island. He had spent four grueling hours under federal interrogation without blinking once.

Yet facing four little boys in pastel sweaters made his heart slam against his ribs like a caged beast.

The child in sage green stepped forward, head tilted, clutching a paper towel. “Are you okay, mister?”

Dominic parted his lips. His throat felt full of crushed glass. Nothing came out. He swallowed hard, forcing air into lungs that felt entirely depleted.

“How old are you?” Dominic’s voice came out raw, a gravelly whisper.

The boy in blue puffed out his small chest and held up an open hand, then added a thumb from the other. “Six. We’re six years old.”

Six.

The number struck Dominic with the force of a freight train. Six years.

Six years ago, there had been only one woman who had ever shared his bed, his thoughts, and his guarded soul. Elena Rossi. The brilliant, fiery art conservator who had looked at his family’s wealth with indifference and looked at Dominic as if he were simply a man worth saving. He had loved her with an intensity that terrified his mother.

And then, without warning, six years ago, Elena had vanished into thin air overnight, leaving behind an empty apartment, a returned key, and an unaddressed note that read only: *Forget me.*

Dominic took a step forward, his polished shoes silent against the stone. “What is your name?”

Before the boy in blue could answer, the heavy oak door swung open behind Dominic.

A woman’s voice drifted into the quiet room—hurried, breathless, melodic, carrying the faint, intoxicating cadence Dominic had spent two thousand nights trying to scrub from his memory.

“Leo? Julian? Come on, sweethearts, the car is outside—we have to leave before—”

The voice died.

Dominic turned around.