Chapter 28 Valentina
VALENTINA
I’ve been pacing so long a rug worth thousands now feels tatty under my feet.
It’s been over two hours since Matteo hauled me out of the pub like a sack of flour, and I still can’t breathe right.
My chest hurts, and my throat is raw from how many times I’ve swallowed the panic bubbling up my esophagus.
I regret not fighting harder to make sure Giovanni knew my exchange with Valeria didn’t rattle me, but Matteo didn’t give me a choice.
One second, I was standing. The next, I was over his shoulder.
I begged for the chance to tell my side, but Giovanni didn’t hear a word I spoke. He was deafened by rage.
Now I’m confined in a room like a Disney princess. It should feel safe, but it doesn’t.
It feels like a cage.
Hunger and unease churn my stomach, but the tray Dante sent sits untouched on Giovanni’s desk. The bread and soup could settle my flipping stomach, but it’s such a twisted mess I’m scared to fill it with food.
I’d hate for anyone to mistake the reason I’m sick.
Flattening my palms against the dresser, I try to level my breaths, hopeful some air will stop me from pacing. It doesn’t work. My pulse drums my ribs too fast to ignore, and the walls creep closer every time I stop wearing a hole in the rug.
As I continue pacing, I replay the expression that crossed Giovanni’s face when he saw Valeria’s marks. Anger wasn’t the only source of his fury. Something darker and more sinister had the room holding its breath like a chemical weapon had detonated in the pub.
If only Valeria hadn’t worn those stupid charms. We could have avoided all this if she had been a little less vain.
Anyone would swear she wanted me to carry her marks. If that was her plan, she’s more foolish than beautiful. She’d have to know how Giovanni would respond. I had an inkling, and I’ve only known him for weeks. Why do you think I wore a long-sleeved shirt on an extremely humid day?
Giovanni and Valeria have known each other for over two decades, so her imprudence makes no sense… unless she wants a war.
Further deliberation is cut short by a rattling doorknob.
My head snaps up so fast my neck aches. It’s most likely Dante. He’s checked on me a few times and constantly assures me everything will be fine, even though it feels anything but.
It’s funny. Dante was thrown into fatherhood without preparation, but his instincts are natural.
His protectiveness is as relentless as Giovanni’s.
Nico and Elio are the more reserved of the brothers, and Matteo has the restless energy of a crack addict.
Therefore, if I have to put money on who’s coming through the door, I’ll only ever wager on Dante.
Faster than I can blink, the door shoots open, and then a flurry of brown tumbles into my room. My breath snags when my eyes land on the shuddering lump indenting the plush rug I wore down.
I take a step back, then another, until my back flattens against the wall.
My caller isn’t Dante.
It’s Giovanni.
And he isn’t alone.
Valeria is a quivering bag of nerves at his feet.
Afraid I might fall, I grip the wall so hard my nails scratch the paintwork. My legs feel like Jell-O, and my breathing is frantic enough to cave my chest in.
Giovanni’s face appears carved from a rock, and his dark, stormy eyes are unreadable. Heat rolls off him like a furnace, making the room stuffy and uninviting.
I shoot my hand up to cover my mouth when he fists Valeria’s hair before yanking it back to align her eyes with mine. Not even the bruise circling her eye can hide the fact she’s been crying. I wish that was the worst of it. Her top lip is split open, and blood is pooling under her nose.
I refuse to believe Giovanni is responsible for her injuries, but the evidence is a little hard to discount. His fury hasn’t weakened the slightest since I last saw him. It’s radiating out of him in invisible waves.
Giovanni’s gravelly tone slices through the silence. “Apologize.”
Like she isn’t at his feet, peering down the barrel of a gun, Valeria’s chin tilts as if she’s better than this. Her smile is gone, wiped by the blood trickling over her lips, but her eyes are still mocking.
“Apologize!” Giovanni roars again, his tug on her hair cruel.
She whimpers when no number of shouts have her mistaking her roots being plucked from her scalp. Then, slowly, like this is an inconvenience, she drifts her eyes to me.
“I’m sorry.” Her words are brittle, as if she forced them through a batch of vomit. They fall flat and do nothing to dispel Giovanni’s anger.
“No.” He drags her across the room until her rain-soaked shirt dampens my shoes. “Not like that. Apologize like you actually fucking mean it.” My stomach recoils when he adds, “Like you know that this apology is the only reason you’re not already under six feet of dirt.”
“Vanni—”
“Apologize!”
Tears topple down Valeria’s cheeks when the reality of the situation finally dawns on her. She isn’t running the show around here. “I’m sorry.”
“For?” Giovanni continues to push, the word shooting from his mouth like poison.
This time, Valeria falls into line. “For thinking I could mark you. That I could put my hands on you and get away with it.”
Since I can’t take more of this, I nod so fast that I make myself dizzy. “It’s fine.” My reply is thin with fragility. “I accept your apology.”
I don’t believe she is sincere.
I simply want this over before Giovanni does something he can’t take back.
In my head, I call Valeria an idiot when she peers up at Giovanni and murmurs, “You wanted an apology. You got one. Now let me go.”
Giovanni doesn’t move, nor does his expression soften.
His shoulders remain rigid, and his jaw locks so firmly I can see the strain.
“No.” The chilliness of his words causes me to shudder.
“I never said I’d let you go once you apologized.
What you did was inexcusable. A mistake like that is only corrected one way. ”
I can’t breathe when he raises his gun an inch. Now, instead of being pointed at Valeria’s eyes, it homes in on the wrinkle popped between her brows.
Valeria re-finds her panic. “What do you want me to do, Giovanni? Beg? I can beg.”
I don’t recognize the voice that comes out of Giovanni.
“I need you to grasp the implications of your actions.” He speaks each word with lethal deliberation.
“And how you can’t take back with words what you did.
You fucking marked her. You dug your nails into the woman I’m obsessed with…
” He makes eye contact with me, and electricity surges through the air.
His hooded gaze is dark and lethal but also burning with something that scares me more than Valeria ever could. “You hurt the woman I love.”
He misses the rapid dilation of my pupils when he returns his eyes to Valeria.
Love? He loves me?
“And now you will die for your stupidity.”
Aware I am her only lifeline, Valeria looks at me, but her silent pleas barely register as I call Giovanni’s name. He doesn’t look at me. He can’t. His focus is locked on his target like a predator, and every fiber of his being screams violence.
Valeria’s confidence is now stripped bare, but it doesn’t matter. Giovanni’s rage is too out of control to reel back in.
I doubt I have what it’ll take to make him see reason, but I have to try. This is about more than me. It is about more than all of us.
“I’m pregnant.” My confession fires from my mouth like a gunshot.
This time, my bait hooks the fish. Giovanni’s eyes snap to me, and the silence that follows the deathly bob of his Adam’s apple feels endless. Valeria stiffens before her lips part in victory.
I don’t pay her fanning feathers any attention. This situation is too volatile for me to remove my eyes from Giovanni for even a second.
His finger is still hugging the trigger, and it’s three-quarters compressed.
“You’re pregnant?” I’d describe his voice as broken, though not necessarily disbelieving.
I wet my lips before murmuring, “Yes.”
Giovanni stares at me like he’s reading the truth on my face, and then his gaze drops to my stomach, where it lingers like my confession is the only thing anchoring him through the storm endeavoring to swallow him whole.
My steps are thunderous as I race to the dresser. With shaky hands, I pull out the test I hid a second before he burst into my room like the hour we’d spent apart was more like a decade.
When I hold it out for him, he drinks it in slowly, like it’s a sacred artifact worth millions. He scans the result, and although it relights the fire in him, the flames are nowhere near as ferocious since they’re watered down by the weight of what this means for his family.
His father now has the chance to meet the heir of his eldest son’s legacy.
“I’m pregnant,” I repeat, softer now, because I need him to understand how this changes everything.
“If this child is Valeria’s”—that hurt to say more than you could ever imagine—“do you want him or her to grow up hating you? Do you want your son or daughter to never forgive you because you couldn’t control your anger about something their mother did to me? ”
His expression morphs as the storm disintegrates before my eyes. He loosens the fist tangled in Valeria’s shiny locks and lowers the highness of his shoulders.
Since we’re not fully out of the woods yet, I push forward, my stance stable but also fragile.
“You don’t want a life like that for your child, Vanni,” I say confidently.
“I grew up hating my father, and I’ve never even met him.
Don’t force your child to walk the same path.
Give him or her the best start possible. Spare their mother.”
The furious delivery of his words skates goose bumps across my skin. “She is not my child’s mother.”
“You don’t know that,” I fire back, heartache in my tone. “None of us know that.” I ignore the hope flaring through Valeria’s eyes. “I wish I could give you a definite answer, but I can’t. All I can do is stop you from making a mistake that will change the course of your child’s life.”
The tear that topples down my cheek reaches him more than words ever could. In under a heartbeat, he crosses the room, falls to his knees, then squashes his forehead to my stomach.
My claim of bilingualism is put to the test when he mutters words into my stomach. I don’t know every word he speaks to his child. He’s talking too fast. But the portions I catch make his intent known.
His child will be raised with the love of both a father and a mother.
When he lifts his eyes to me, wordlessly announcing who he wants to fulfill the role of mother, I weave my fingers through his hair, grounding him, and then glance down at Valeria.
She’s still frozen on the floor with her mouth ajar.
I wait for her gaze to meet mine before giving her a look that says everything: Go. Now.
She appears as if she wants to argue, but the sight of Giovanni on his knees, silently pleading for me to be his rock through his latest crisis, silences her.
After standing on shaky legs, she slips out without a sound.
Five seconds later, the softness of the bedding caresses my curves, and Giovanni buries his head between my legs.