Updated Oct 23, 2025 • ~10 min read
SEB’S POV
My mother arrived like a force of nature.
One minute the apartment was calm. The next, she was sweeping through the door in a cloud of expensive perfume and Italian exclamations, pulling me into a hug that somehow managed to feel both loving and accusatory.
“Sebastiano! Three months! You’ve been married three months and you tell me nothing!”
“Ciao, Mama. It’s good to see you too.”
She pulled back, holding me at arm’s length to study my face. Isabella Santoro was sixty-two and didn’t look a day over fifty, with dark hair only slightly touched with gray and eyes that missed nothing.
“You look different,” she said in Italian. “Happier. Less… how do you say… wound up like a spring.”
“I’ve been good, Mama.”
“So good you forgot to invite your mother to your wedding?”
“It was a courthouse thing. Very small. We didn’t invite anyone.”
“Declan told me everything.” She switched to English, probably for Lina’s benefit. “About the green card. About the arrangement. About the baby that isn’t yours.”
My stomach dropped. “Mama—”
“We’ll discuss it later. Right now, I want to meet this woman who has turned my practical son into a romantic.” She looked past me. “Lina, yes?”
Lina had been hovering in the doorway to the kitchen, and I could see the panic in her eyes. But she stepped forward, hand extended.
“Mrs. Santoro. It’s wonderful to meet you.”
My mother ignored the hand and pulled Lina into a hug instead.
“You call me Isabella. Or Mama, if you prefer.” She pulled back, studying Lina’s face the way she’d studied mine. “You’re prettier than your photos.”
“We haven’t posted many photos,” Lina said carefully.
“I noticed. Why is that?”
Oh God. This was going to be a disaster.
LINA’S POV
Dinner was the most stressful meal of my life.
Isabella sat at the head of our dining table like a queen holding court, asking questions that felt like traps wrapped in pleasantries.
“So Lina, tell me how you met my son.”
I glanced at Seb. We’d rehearsed this story a dozen times with Natalia.
“At a coffee shop,” I said. “Through a mutual friend. We just… clicked.”
“Clicked.” Isabella took a delicate bite of the pasta Seb had made. “And three weeks later, you married?”
“Four weeks,” Seb corrected.
“Oh, forgive me. Four weeks. So much more reasonable.” Her tone was dry. “You must understand, this is very unlike Sebastian. He analyzes everything. Plans everything. And suddenly, a courthouse wedding to a woman he barely knows.”
“Mama—”
“I’m not criticizing. I’m observing.” She turned those sharp eyes on me. “You’re pregnant.”
It wasn’t a question.
“Yes,” I said quietly.
“How far along?”
“Almost three months.”
“And the father?”
The word hung there like a bomb.
“Someone I dated briefly,” I said. “Before Sebastian and I got together. He’s… he’s involved, but Sebastian and I are raising the baby together.”
“How modern.” Isabella sipped her wine. “And this man, he’s fine with my son raising his child?”
“We’re working out an arrangement.”
“An arrangement.” She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “You seem to like those.”
Seb’s hand found mine under the table. Squeezed.
“Mama, that’s enough.”
“Is it? Because from where I’m sitting, this all seems very convenient. You need a green card. She needs money. A baby appears. And suddenly you’re playing house.”
“We’re not playing—”
“Then what are you doing?” Isabella set down her fork. “Sebastiano, I didn’t raise you to lie to federal authorities. Or to yourself.”
“I’m not lying to anyone.”
“No? Then tell me the truth. Do you love this woman, or are you just being noble?”
The question echoed in the sudden silence.
Seb looked at me. Then at his mother. When he spoke, his voice was clear.
“I love her. Completely. Unconditionally. Whether you approve or not.”
Something flickered across Isabella’s face. Surprise, maybe. Or recognition.
“And you?” she asked me. “Do you love my son?”
My throat felt tight. “Yes.”
“Since when?”
“I don’t know. It happened gradually. And then all at once.”
“How very poetic.” Isabella stood, collecting plates. “I’ll do the dishes. You two clearly need to talk.”
She disappeared into the kitchen, leaving Seb and me alone.
“I’m sorry,” he said immediately. “She’s being—”
“Protective. She’s being protective.” I touched his face. “She loves you. She wants to make sure I’m not using you.”
“Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Using me?”
I kissed him instead of answering. Slow and deep and full of everything I couldn’t quite put into words.
When we pulled apart, Isabella was watching from the kitchen doorway.
“Well,” she said. “At least that looked real.”
SEB’S POV
After Lina went to bed—exhausted from playing perfect wife all evening—my mother cornered me.
“We need to talk,” she said.
“I know.”
We sat on the couch, the same couch where Lina and I had watched movies and fallen asleep tangled together. Where we’d stopped pretending this was anything but real.
“Tell me the truth,” Mama said quietly. “All of it.”
So I did. The arrangement. The money. The pregnancy that wasn’t mine. The custody battle. The home study. Every messy, complicated detail.
She listened without interrupting, her face unreadable.
“And now?” she asked when I finished.
“Now I love her. And I want to build a life with her. With the baby. All of it.”
“Even though it started as a lie?”
“It didn’t feel like a lie. Not after the first week.” I ran a hand through my hair. “Mama, I know this looks bad. I know you think I’m being reckless—”
“I think you’re being human.” She smiled, really smiled this time. “Sebastiano, do you know why I fell in love with your father?”
“No.”
“Because he was the first man who didn’t try to fix me. Who didn’t have a plan or an agenda. Who just… saw me. And loved me anyway.” She took my hand. “That’s what I saw when you looked at Lina tonight. You see her. All of her. The messy, complicated, beautiful parts. And you love her anyway.”
“I do.”
“Then I’m happy for you.” She squeezed my hand. “But Sebastian, this home study. If they find out the marriage started as fraud—”
“They won’t.”
“You can’t know that.”
“Then we’ll deal with it. Together.”
She studied me for a long moment. “You really have changed. The old Sebastian would have had a backup plan. An exit strategy.”
“The old Sebastian hadn’t met Lina yet.”
“Hmm.” She stood, heading toward the guest room. “I like her, by the way. Even if she is terrible at hiding her feelings. Every time she looks at you, it’s written all over her face.”
“What is?”
“That she’s completely in love with you. And terrified of losing you.” Mama paused at the door. “Don’t let her be terrified. Show her she’s safe with you.”
“I’m trying.”
“Try harder.” She smiled. “And Sebastian? Next time you get married, invite your mother.”
“There won’t be a next time, Mama. Lina’s it for me.”
“Good answer.” She closed the door.
I sat there alone, thinking about what she’d said. About Lina being terrified of losing me. About showing her she was safe.
I found her in our bedroom, sitting cross-legged on the bed with her laptop.
“Working?” I asked.
“Trying to. Can’t focus.” She closed the laptop. “Your mom hates me, doesn’t she?”
“She loves you. She’s just protective.”
“She thinks I’m using you.”
“She thought that. Past tense.” I sat next to her. “I told her everything. The truth about how we started. How I feel about you now. All of it.”
“Seb—”
“She needed to know. And she deserves the truth.” I took her hand. “Lina, you’re not alone in this. You keep acting like you have to prove something or earn your place here. But you don’t. You’re my wife. You’re home. That’s not conditional.”
Tears spilled down her cheeks. “Hormones.”
“I don’t think it’s just hormones.”
She laughed through the tears. “Your mom scares me.”
“She scares everyone. It’s her superpower.”
“What if the home study goes badly? What if they see through us?”
“Then we handle it. But Lina, we’re not lying anymore. This is real. Our marriage, our life, our family. That’s what we show them.”
She curled into my side. “When did you get so confident about all this?”
“When I realized I had more to fight for than just a green card.” I kissed her hair. “I have you. And that’s worth everything.”
We fell asleep like that, holding each other close, while my mother slept in the guest room and tomorrow loomed with all its uncertainties.
But for tonight, we were just us.
And that was enough.
LINA’S POV
I woke up at three AM to find the bed empty.
Panic flared until I heard voices in the kitchen. Seb and his mother, speaking in rapid Italian.
I shouldn’t eavesdrop. I knew I shouldn’t.
But my feet carried me to the hallway anyway, just close enough to hear.
“…don’t understand,” Seb was saying. “She’s everything I didn’t know I needed.”
“And the baby? You’re truly okay with raising another man’s child?”
“The baby is Lina’s. That makes them mine.”
“Such pretty words. But Sebastian, children are not easy. Marriage is not easy. And you’re starting with both, plus immigration fraud and custody battles. The odds are against you.”
“I don’t care about the odds.”
“You should. What happens if she leaves? If she decides this life isn’t what she wants?”
“She won’t.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I do know. Because I know her. And I know what we have.” His voice softened. “Mama, I know you’re worried. But I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”
A long pause.
“Your father would have liked her,” Isabella said finally. “He always had a weakness for stubborn women.”
“I come by it honestly.”
“Yes, you do.” She sighed. “The home study. When is it?”
“Two days.”
“And you’re prepared?”
“As prepared as we can be.”
“Then I’ll stay. Help however I can. Make it look like you have family support.”
“Mama, you don’t have to—”
“I want to. For you. And for Lina.” Another pause. “She makes you happy, Sebastiano. I can see it. That’s all a mother wants for her child.”
I crept back to bed before they could catch me, my heart full of something I couldn’t quite name.
When Seb slipped back under the covers, I pretended to be asleep.
He kissed my forehead anyway.
“I love you,” he whispered.
And even though he probably thought I couldn’t hear him, I whispered it back.
“I love you too.”
Everything was going to be okay.
It had to be.
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