Page 127 of My Big, Fat, Secret Billionaire Baby

Mia, sensing the emotional shift, turns her wide green eyes towards the newcomer, regarding her solemnly, the biscuit in her mouth momentarily forgotten.

“Hello, Mother,” Leo says finally, his voice flat. “Sabrina, Mia, this is my mother.”

I force a polite smile, murmuring a hello. I feel supremely awkward.

“Ms. Taylor,” his mother says, tearing her gaze away from Mia to look at me. She offers me a shaky, watery smile. “Sabrina. Thank you… thank you for letting me… for being here.”

Her eyes flick back to Mia.

“May I?” she asks Leo, gesturing towards the empty chair beside him.

Leo gives a curt, almost imperceptible nod.

Karen sinks into the chair, her entire focus on Mia. “She looks… just like you did, Leonardo. Those eyes…” She reaches out a hesitant hand, then seems to think better of it, pulling it back. “She’s perfect.”

“Yeah,” Leo says. An uncomfortable silence descends.

“So,” Karen begins again, turning her attention to Leo, trying for a brightness that doesn’t quite land. “How… how have you been, honey? Since the… the accident? You look… better. Stronger.”

“Recovering,” Leo replies noncommittally.

“And… this?” Karen gestures vaguely between Leo and Mia. She looks at me, her expression almost pleading. “How did... when did you find out?”

Here we go. The interrogation. I brace myself, but Leo answers before I have to.

“Recently,” he says curtly. “Sabrina kept her... situation... private.” The implication hangs there.

Private fromhim.

His mother’s gaze sharpens slightly. She looks at me again. Is that judgment I see in her eyes? Or just maternal concern?

“I see. Well.” She takes a shaky breath, then focuses on Leo once more. “Leonardo, I… I know I wasn’t… I wasn’t the mother I should have been.” Tears well up again, genuine this time, filled with decades of regret. “Your father… his drinking… it consumed everything. It consumedme. I was so focused on just surviving, on keeping things from completely falling apart, that I… I failed you. I see that now.”

She reaches across the table then, her hand covering Leo’s where it rests near his coffee cup. He flinches, but doesn’t pull away.

“I enabled him,” she continues, her voice thick with tears now. “Made excuses for him. Protected him when I should have been protectingyou. I thought Iwas keeping the peace, keeping the family together, but I was just… letting the poison spread. Letting it hurt you.” Her shoulders shake with silent sobs. “And I am so, so sorry, Leo. For all of it. For not being stronger. For not choosing you.”

My own throat tightens. Listening to her broken confession… it resonates with uncomfortable familiarity. My own mother’s fierce protectiveness, her warnings about men like Leo… it comes from the same place, doesn’t it? A place of deep hurt.

Different circumstances, different addictions maybe. Leo’s father’s alcohol, my father’s… unreliability? But the pattern… the enabling, the fear, the impact on the child left behind… it’s hauntingly similar.

Leo sits frozen, staring down at his mother’s hand covering his. Is he hearing her apology? Or just the echo of old wounds?

“I know I can’t change the past,” Karen whispers, pulling herself together enough to wipe her tears. “But Mia… she’s a second chance, isn’t she? A chance for connection. For us. For family. Please, Leo. Don’t shut me out completely. Let me… let me try to be the grandmother she deserves. Let me try to make up for…” Her voice breaks again.

The raw vulnerability in the room is suffocating. My PR brain is screaming about managing optics, controlling narratives. But my human brain, the one shaped by my own father’s absence, just feels… sad. For the broken little boy still inside the billionaire. For the mother consumed by regret. And for Mia, born into this legacy of pain.

But I also feel hope.

And the potential for forgiveness.

Leo slowly, deliberately withdraws hishand from under his mother’s. He looks up, meeting her tear-filled gaze.

His expression is still guarded, but the granite hardness seems to have softened slightly.

“Trying isn’t enough,” he says quietly. His voice is rough but lacking the earlier bitterness. “Showing up is what matters. Consistently. Reliably.” He glances down at Mia, then back at his mother. “Mia deserves reliability. No more broken promises. No more disappearing acts.”

It’s not forgiveness. Not acceptance. But it’s not outright rejection either.

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