The whole block smelled like tomato sauce the minute he turned the corner.

That was the one thing Gio remembered the most about the old restaurant. His stomach growled as he dragged his feet toward the front doors, propped open to enjoy the gentle heat of the California autumn. Stroking a hand over the ever-expanding swell of his belly, Gio tried to keep calm.

He'd dressed up for his first visit home in eight years, but the maternity shirt was almost too small already, and he'd gotten a pale smudge all the way down one leg when he got into the taxi. Every step closer that he got made him that much more desperate to turn around.

The restaurant was busy, even at the middle of the day, the laughter and conversation of happy customers floating out onto the street. He could remember hating the sound of clinking plates because it just meant more to clean, but after so long it was like a song for his exhausted soul.

It was the swelling in his ankles that eventually made him go in. The hostess podium was the same as always, the paint a little newer, but the same glossy black. The girl behind it wasn't his sister, though, younger and blonde. She had a very professional smile without the family's characteristic gapped teeth, so she wasn't a cousin or other relation.

"Just one, sir?" she asked, perky and entirely too put-together for him today.

"I'm here to see someone, actually," he said, trying not to feel like a fat, sweaty slob as he scanned the restaurant.

Mia was easy to find, her love of heels putting her head and shoulders over just about everyone. She was clearing a table, her movements so practiced that she didn't even need to look at what she was doing. She scanned the restaurant for empty glasses and other customer problems as she stacked plates.

The first time her eyes passed over him, it was an electric shock. His hair stood on end, even as she moved on without a second thought. He thought he'd been prepared for the lack of recognition, but it stung a little.

The second time, she lingered, the lines on her forehead deepening in thought. He almost laughed. Whatever she was thinking, it wasn't even close to the truth.

"I see them," he told the hostess. "Do you mind if I just go in?"

"Go ahead," she said cheerfully. He'd have to make sure that she didn't get into too much trouble.

Shuffling toward Mia, he held eye contact, watching her get more and more confused. She bit her lip, pausing with a dessert plate in one hand and a wine glass in the other as he approached. She'd filled out a little, no longer all elbows, and he felt a pang that he'd missed that.

He smiled as he got closer, winding his way around the tables with the kind of muscle memory he'd thought long gone. Her eyes widened as they fixed on his own front teeth, what their father called the quarter slot.

"Hi, Mia," he said.

He should have known that his family couldn't do anything quietly. Mia screamed, the plate and glass slipping out of her hands and shattering on the tile floor. In the sudden silence that filled the restaurant, everyone staring, she sucked in a breath through those two wide front teeth, a whistle that he knew in his bones.

"Vinny!" She threw herself into his arms, missing his belly by chance more than design. "Papa, Vinny's home!"

Struggling to steady his much taller little sister, Gio winced when the kitchen door flew open with a bang.

"Vinny?" his father bellowed, his head down like a bull about to charge. He was still wearing the same old coat, stained with years of tomato sauce and embroidered with his name in gold thread. Marcello Milano.

Over his shoulder, Gio watched his papa's pale face appear through the steam from the kitchen. Tall and proud, Papa was the quieter of the two, his emotions showing in his deep hazel eyes.

Eyes that welled with tears as Gio raised a hand and waved. "Hi, Papa," he said, his voice shaking.

The world descended into chaos.

There was shouting, crying, and gesturing in the way only real Italians could manage. Mia screamed a few more times when she realized that Gio hadn't just gotten fat while he was away. Gio thought his father would faint when he pressed one massive, reverent hand to Gio's belly.

"Oh, my Vinny," Papa said when he pulled Gio into a hug that cracked his bones. "What have you been up to?"

The answer to that question was one of the things he'd been dreading most about coming home. How did he tell his parents that he'd been lying to them for years? That he'd killed men and done things as an FBI agent that would make his grandmother roll over in her grave?

He'd been thinking about it for weeks, and he still didn't have any answers.

"It's Gio now, Papa," he said, taking a deep breath. "I guess I'd better start at the beginning."

Two hours later, seated at the chef's table in the kitchen, his voice failing him, he'd barely covered the basics.

"We should close the restaurant," Papa said while Gio took a sip of water.

Everyone in the room, from Mia to the dishwasher, stared at him like he'd grown a second head. Milano's was never closed for dinner, not even when Mia had appendicitis or Gio broke his arm climbing the columns with the family friend, Luke.

Mia leaned over and took his temperature with her wrist.

"I feel fine," he said, throwing a napkin at her. "But Vinny... Gio is back home, and with so much to tell us. Nothing is more important than our family."

Gio's eyes burned, tears welling up until he had to steal the napkin from Mia. "It's fine, Papa," he said. His voice broke on the words, tears pouring down his cheeks. He'd never considered that his papa thought he was more important than the restaurant when he was a kid.

"There's plenty of time for him to tell us, right?" Mia said, her eyes glaring daggers into his skull. "We don't have to run him ragged all at once."

"Right," Gio said, leaning his head on her shoulder. "I'm on leave for another two months, and I don't have anywhere to be."

"What about the father?" his dad asked, crossing his meaty arms. "He's not going to miss you?"

Gio winced. "It's complicated," he said weakly.

Humphing and muttering Italian threats under his breath, Marcello wandered off into the kitchen to vent his emotions on the unsuspecting ingredients.

Papa was more direct. "I know people," he growled.

"It's okay, Papa," Gio said, mopping at his eyes. "It's not like that."

"Hey, you must be hungry," Mia said suddenly, starting to get to her feet.

"Uffa! Your grandparents would beat me with a switch," Papa said, shooting up like a beanstalk. "I will put together a plate for you. I know just the thing. Don't you dare think of moving from that spot," he added, shaking a finger at Gio. "Mia, you watch your brother. He doesn't move a muscle."

"Okay, Papa," she said too cheerfully. As soon as Papa's back was turned, she dropped her smile and leaned against him. "Thought you could use a break."

"Thanks," he said, taking another drink of his water. His throat was raw, but there was so much to say that he hadn't wanted to stop talking.

"How complicated is complicated?" she asked after a moment of watching the kitchen staff rush around. It was a well choreographed dance, and he could still pick out the spaces where a body could slip through without disrupting it. "Is it 'he's a bum, and I'm never going back to him' complicated, or 'he's not Italian, and Papa's going to have a heart attack when I tell him' complicated?"

Gio laughed, smoothing a hand over his stomach. "He's not Italian, and we met when I was undercover for the FBI investigating the company he was an executive at. That kind of complicated."

She blinked a few times, then shook her head. "I have got no advice for that. You have stumped me." She chuckled a little as one of the cooks got distracted and flipped when he should have flopped, sending a splash of bechamel sauce onto his apron. The other cooks hooted and jeered, and the man took a bow.

"I might have stumped me, too," Gio said, "so don't feel bad."

Mia sighed. "That sucks. Want to talk about it?"

He leaned his head against the sticky vinyl back of the booth and thought about it. "His name is Marcus, and when we met, I was reading one of those romance novels like nonna always hid in her sock drawer. I was going by the name Giorgio Romano, and my contact had stood me up for the second meeting in a row. Or maybe it was the third."

Snorting loudly, Mia shifted around in her seat until she could face him, her eyes, so like his, wide with interest.

"I was just getting to the best part of the story when I look up and see this guy at another table staring at me..."

* * *

"Looking sharp, Rizzi."

"Te fugo, Curtis," Gio said without looking up. His feet were killing him, and he looked like a blimp. On top of which, his tie refused to tie correctly, hanging crooked around the bulge of his belly every time.

"You know, if I was a lesser man, I'd take that personally. You might hurt all two of my feelings," he said, leaning against the wall nearby.

Even from here, the thrum of conversation from people attending the medal and promotion ceremony was loud enough to rattle Gio's composure. When the Assistant Director had mentioned it to him, he'd been expecting a small affair, not this public spectacle. And here he was six and a half months pregnant with ankles the size of tree trunks.

"Fuck," he growled, throwing the tie on the ground. "I hate this."

"Hey, breathe. This is just a formality, you know? You stand there and look pretty while they stick you with a couple pins." Curtis frowned at him in concern as he scooped the tie off the ugly industrial carpet. His arm was long healed, no sign of the damage in his movement or the lay of his expensive shirt. "You need me to get you a paper bag to breathe in or something?"

"Go away, Curtis," Paolo said, appearing like magic. He snatched the tie out of Curtis's hands, smoothing it out as he glared. "You're not helping."

"Going, going. Don't blame this on me. All I said was that he looked nice." Backing away with his arms up, Curtis disappeared around the corner toward the big banquet room.

"Don't be too hard on him," Gio said, lifting his chin so that the other omega could try his hand at tying the stubborn scrap of silk.

"You look freaked out," Paolo said, his fingers brushing the underside of Gio's chin.

"They're barely going to be able to reach my chest to pin the medals on, my stomach is so big. I haven't prepared a speech, and I'm pretty sure every other word I say is going to be a curse word. My whole family is out there, and they are definitely going to embarrass the shit out of me. Is there anything else?" Gio tried not to think too hard about what was going on, just in case it made him nauseous.

Paolo grabbed his chin in surprisingly strong fingers and tipped his head down. "You're going to do fine, and everyone's family embarrasses them on days like today. It's part of the family code."

"What if he's here?" Gio bit his lip as the question he'd been trying the hardest not to think of all day slipped out. "What if he's here, and he hates me for what I did? What if it wasn't Giorgio Romero who was in love with him? What if it was me?"

"I... I don't know what to say to that," Paolo said, giving him a sympathetic pat. "This is why I don't do undercover work. What did your therapist say?"

"Ugh." Gio rolled his eyes. "Nothing useful. Compartmentalization exercises are as close as you can get to the exact opposite of what I need right now. I can't shove the whole experience into a box. The behemoth lump sitting on my bladder is a bit of a reminder."

Paolo smiled, but his eyes were serious. "Maybe that's your answer, then."

"That," Gio said, shaking his finger at the secretary, "is one of those things that sounds very wise, but is actually completely useless."

"Sorry, my crystal ball is at the cleaners. You do look nice, though," he said, smoothing down Gio's tie.

"I look like I swallowed a beach ball," Gio grumbled.

"Hey, Rizzi. You're up."

They both turned to glare at Curtis as he leaned around the corner.

"Wish me luck," Gio said, smoothing his shirt over his stomach nervously. "I feel like I'm about to be put on display in a zoo."

"It's good PR," Paolo said, laced with bitterness. "You're one of their most dependable career agents, and with you in for life, they won't have to promote another omega until you retire." He smiled, a strained stretch of dark lips. "Good luck."

Gio watched him go, then shuffled the other direction, his stomach bobbing along in front of him. The room was just as packed as he'd been dreading, the makeshift rows of chairs full of relative strangers. Even the tiny knot of his family, wedged between Curtis and the Assistant Director's wife, barely knew him. Hell, he barely knew himself anymore.

He took his place on the stage just in time for the Director to stride out on stage. By the second sentence of his speech, Gio had tuned out. They were all the same. Besides, with everyone in the room staring at his belly, it was hard to focus on how honored he should be to be standing there. The baby kicked, landing a solid hit to his kidneys, and it took all his concentration to hide the flinch.

Scanning the crowd, Gio resisted the urge to smooth down his shirt again. He wasn't nervous anymore. He wasn't much of anything. Hungry. He was a little hungry. These days, it felt like he was doing nothing but eat, and his Papa was more than happy to indulge him.

A flash of gold drew his eye to the back corner, and his heart leapt into his throat when he saw Carlos rolling his eyes at whatever the director was going on about. Beside him, Teddy wasn't even pretending, staring at his phone with rapt concentration. A flock of butterflies took flight, doing loops around Gio's stomach, and he scanned the surrounding crowd more carefully. He recognized a few of the men near them, but none of them were Marcus.

The crushing disappointment surprised him. He had been thinking of Marcus lately, of course. How could he not with the baby getting bigger every day? He'd even missed his sense of humor whenever he made a joke that went right over his family's head.

He wasn't in love with him or anything. That had been a cover, and the cover was over. If it were any other op, he'd have shoved it in a box by now. Like he told Paolo, it was hard to push this one aside when he had the baby reminding him all the time. Maybe that would change when the baby was born.

The crowd clapped politely, and the director smiled and posed for a photo.

He didn't think it would be any better; instead of just a belly, he'd have a walking, talking baby. A baby that could very well have Marcus's smile or his nose. Please God, let him have Marcus's nose. And there would be questions.

Gio lifted his chin as the director pinned the first medal to his chest. His father was cheering too loudly in the audience, people turning to stare at him. With detached surprise, Gio waited for the crushing embarrassment that completely failed to materialize. He wasn't embarrassed at all when Papa burst into tears. They loved him, and that was good, he reasoned from a distance.

Everything was coming to him through a layer of fog. The director kept going on about what an honor it was, and how proud they were to have him. He didn't feel proud or happy or even fed up with the pomp and circumstance.

It was like he'd been shoved into a box. Had he? If he couldn't put Giorgio Romano away in a box, had he accidentally put Giovanni Rizzi? Was he doomed to live in this awful state of numbness forever because he couldn't forget a nice guy who was too good for him.

The medals were on, heavy on his jacket, but even that was a minor inconvenience as he stood and posed where he was directed.

"Think, Rizzi," he muttered to himself between handshakes, but even that sounded as though it was a long way off, echoing through water or across a canyon.

He'd been at the top of his training classes, selected for his ability to improvise outside of the box solutions. But what was outside the box?

Giovanni Rizzi was outside the box. But so was Giorgio Romano. Every rule he'd put in place, things that Giorgio Romano 'wouldn't' do, had been broken. The cover had never fit quite right, and he'd been left to fill in the cracks with bits and pieces of old covers.

Bits and pieces of himself.

Marcus had done nothing but make more cracks, surprising him into revealing more of himself. Giorgio Romano had crumbled.

He'd put the man who loved Marcus into a box. He'd put himself into a box.

He jerked his hand out of the handshake he was in the middle of and looked around frantically. The crowd had thinned at some point, the ceremony over for who knew how long, and his heart stopped when he didn't immediately see Carlos's dark head.

When he spotted him talking to Paolo, he almost cried in relief.

"This is a real win for the Bureau," the director was saying to an alpha wearing too much expensive cologne. "A real step forward in equality."

Gio barely concealed his snort, Paolo's words ringing through his head. They'd never have to promote another omega as long as he stayed with the Bureau. Fuck, he hated politics. The baby kicked him in the ribs.

He blinked hard. He hated politics, hated glad-handing and sucking up. He hated being overworked and under appreciated. He hated having to strip his personality off and plaster someone else's in its place.

"I hate my job," he said, shock making him stop dead in his tracks. Sure, he'd said it before, but everyone did. He'd never meant it before. "I hate my job."

"Sorry, did you say something?" the director asked, turning away from his conversation.

Gio bit his lip, swallowing all the possible responses. "No, sir," he said. "I was just going to excuse myself to go to the bathroom."

The director grimaced. "Of course, man. Nothing going on here that can't wait for working hours," he said with a wink. "Go and celebrate." With a magnanimous wave, he turned away.

Making a bee-line across the room as quickly as his stomach would allow, Gio tried to swallow down his nerves. If they hated him, they wouldn't be here.

Carlos glanced up as he approached, one eyebrow going up. "You look enormous, and I'm saying that as someone who had twins."

Gio laughed, relief and happiness and determination bubbling through his blood like cheap champagne. "I need your help," he said, tears dripping down his cheeks. He didn't even care when Curtis handed him a handkerchief, orbiting Paolo like the moon. "I need so much help right now."

Teddy smiled, holding out his hand, and Carlos groaned and slapped a wad of bills into it. "Don't get arrogant, brujo," he said as he turned to Gio. "What do you need?"