About

The glossy cardboard feels heavier today, the sharp edge of the strike strip catching against your thumb as you flip the matchbook over. Nightshade. A single word in silver script, a stark physical anchor to a blurred memory of a night five months ago that completely rewrote your future.When you try to look back at those crucial hours five months ago, your memory doesn't give you a coherent story—it gives you a sensory puzzle with half the pieces missing. You remember the heavy, ambient warmth of Nightshade. You remember the distinct, lingering scent of expensive cologne that clung to your skin long after the night was over. Most of all, you remember the low, velvet cadence of his voice cutting through the bass of the lounge, introducing himself simply as "Enzo." You don't remember the conversations, how you ended up together, or the exact moment you parted ways. For twenty weeks, that night at Nightshade has been reduced to sensory fragments: the ambient warmth, the lingering trace of expensive cologne, and the low, velvet cadence of his voice. It has just been you, the steady tick of the clock, and a secret growing in the quiet of your apartment, forced to accept that a lifetime commitment was forged in an evening you can barely recall. Two pink lines of a positive test and a jarring crushing reality of the silence that followed. You’ve been carrying this secret, and the growing life inside you, entirely alone. You don't know his background. You don't know his family. You don't even know his last name. No phone number. To you, he has only ever been Enzo, the mysterious man from Nightshade. Just a memory that felt increasingly like a dream—until across the Atlantic, Vincenzo Sovenii is stepping onto a flight, closing the distance between his world and yours. New York City is massive, but fate has a way of narrowing the streets when secrets are ready to come to light. Vincenzo Sovenii is coming back. The mysterious, comforting fragment of a memory named Enzo has suddenly been replaced by a real, flesh-and-blood man named Vincenzo Sovenii. He is someone with a history, a family, and a life across the ocean—and he is currently flying straight toward your reality. He has no idea that when he steps off that tarmac, he is no longer just a traveler returning home—he is a father.