Chapter 37 Valentina
VALENTINA
Iwake with a groan. My body feels like it’s been stitched to the mattress, and it takes effort to peel my eyes open. When I do, the fluorescent light above my head is too white and bright, and the godawful scent of scrubbed-clean stainless steel filters into my nose.
Even disoriented, I know where I’m waking up.
I’ve spent the equivalent of months in rooms just like this.
It’s different this time, though. I’m not on the pull-out bed.
Mom is. She’s curled up on the narrow mattress.
Her expression is peaceful, and her chest is rising and falling in a slow rhythm that announces she’s asleep.
An array of emotions smacks into me. I’m glad Mom is here and that she’s safe, but where is Giovanni? Did he leave? Did he—
“Scoot over,” interrupts a deep timbre that makes every muscle I own clench at once.
Giovanni.
Seconds later, the mattress dips under his weight, and his arm slides under me. Carefully, he rolls me onto my side so I face away from him. He shuffles in close until his chest is solid against my back and his breaths are warm at my neck.
I flare my nostrils and breathe him in. He smells like soap, cologne, and something darker, like how cigarette smoke clings to your skin even after you shower.
His familiar scent grounds me, but it also reminds me of why we smell so different. My thighs are still sticky, and the hygienic smell isn’t solely from the equipment around my bed.
My skin smells just as sanitary.
I stare at the wall, trying to process what’s happened, but the question I want answered more than anything slips out spontaneously. “The baby?”
Giovanni’s arm around me stiffens for the quickest second before his stressed words batter my temple.
“We don’t know yet. It’s too early.” He angles his head so I can see the truth in his eyes when he adds, “But no matter the outcome, nothing changes. It will always be us.” His voice is steady now, like iron beneath velvet.
“Worst outcome, we’ll try again. It won’t be until you’ve recovered, but we don’t have to rush.
” His husky laugh is unexpected but highly required.
“My father’s illness seems to have left town the instant his eyes landed on your mother. ”
You can hear the smile in my words. “Maybe he was dying of a broken heart?”
“Maybe.” I’m highly skeptical his smile reaches his eyes. He’s tense, like he’s worried I’ll run like I thought he would the instant I realized the blood seeping into my dress was coming from my vagina.
“Is everything okay?”
Giovanni’s slow exhale trickles through my hair. “You collapsed because you were poisoned.”
“Poisoned? Who would do that?”
The tension exuding from him coils like a spring. “Tomasso.”
I blink in rapid succession.
That isn’t the name I was anticipating.
“Valeria’s father?” I hear Giovanni’s nod instead of seeing it. “Why would he do that? That doesn’t make any sense… unless it was for Valeria.”
“I thought the same.” His fingers trace circles on my arm. His touch is both soothing and terrifying. “But it wasn’t about Valeria. It was about control and an influence he had no claim to. He wanted leverage, and when I took that from him, he took it out on you instead of on me.”
Fear weaves through my veins like ice. I thought I’d only have to get around Valeria to save my heart from being stomped in eight months’ time. I had no idea I’d have to take on her entire family.
When I involuntarily shiver, Giovanni inches closer.
“He won’t hurt you again, Valentina. I promise you that.
No one will ever hurt you again.” He waits for my shudders to slacken before he says, “But I need you to know that I couldn’t guarantee that without the steps I had to take tonight.
I had to remove feelings from the equation to make sure you came first.” His body vibrates with anger.
“This was the second time he’s tried to kill you, so I couldn’t let him off scot-free. ”
I freeze, and then tug at my ear, certain I heard him wrong. “What?”
The only other time my life has been in jeopardy was when I was nestled in my mother’s womb. That tormentor also went by Tomasso, but that name is as common here as Chris is for the rest of the world.
With the pieces too haggard for me to slot together, Giovanni cuts them up into manageable pieces. “Tomasso isn’t just Valeria’s father, Valentina. He’s yours too.”
“No,” I deny, shaking my head. “You said Valeria’s last name is Giuffrida. That she only used her deceased grandmother’s maiden name to save face at the IVF clinic. You must be mistaken...” My words fade as a memory surfaces too fast for my woozy head.
My mother wasn’t dragging me away from Giovanni like she was suddenly unsupportive of our relationship.
She was dragging me away from the monster in her nightmares.
The once-safe room suddenly feels suffocating, and the rhythmic beep of the heart monitor is too loud. They shriek in my ears as if they’re counting down to a truth I’m not brave enough to face just yet.
I can’t help but push, though. “What did you do?”
“Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to, dolcezza.”
I pay no attention to the warning in Giovanni’s tone. “Did you kill him?”
“Val—”
“Answer me. Did you kill my father?”
I choke on a sob when he answers nonchalantly, “Yes. I killed him.”
My mind spirals as I fight to grip reality. My father isn’t a nice man. Or should I say wasn’t? But that doesn’t mean I wish he were dead. I’d never met him. He could have changed. Twenty-five years is a lot of time for improvement, and he could have done it for me…
A faded memory smacks my inner monologue into submission. Children are molded by their parents’ actions. The way they’re treated, loved, and supported shapes their future. They learn by example, and only a sturdy foundation of security and love ensures they go into adulthood with good intentions.
Valeria’s vindictiveness and her it’s-all-about-me mantra prove her childhood didn’t have the stability mine did. My mother protected me—both back then and now.
The sheer terror on her face when she dragged me away from my father wasn’t manufactured. Fear like that cannot be made up. She was genuinely terrified, and I can see how Giovanni may have felt the same way when he was confronted with the truth.
An unfamiliar emotion loosens the heaviness on my chest. Is it grief or relief? I truly don’t know. If I had to give an answer, I’d lean toward the latter.
Whatever it is, Giovanni feels it too. “If you want to run, Valentina, I understand. But before you do, remember there will be consequences when I catch you.” His heavy pause steals my breath.
He didn’t kill my father to hurt me.
He did it to protect me.
“And I won’t delay my chase for even a second. Injured or not, I’ll be hot on your tail within minutes of you fleeing. You can run from me, Valentina, but the outcome of my chase will always be the same. You are mine, so when I catch you, I get to—”
“Fuck me,” I fill in, whispering.
I’m still bewildered, but I also understand. My father was a horrible man. He was only kind to my mother until she fell pregnant; then it went downhill—fast. He would have killed me years ago if my mother hadn’t been brave enough to run, and my grave would have been right next to hers.
I don’t doubt that.
Giovanni is everything my father never was. He’s fierce, loyal, and extremely protective. Not just of me, but also of my family. My true family.
I crank my neck until I see Giovanni’s dark and tormented eyes. His decision wasn’t easy for him to make. He will stew over it for weeks to come. Possibly even months, and the knowledge clears away the sludge of his confession.
“I’m not going to run,” I whisper. “Yet.” The tic in his jaw weakens until it matches the beat of my heart monitor when I add to my confession. “I like being chased by you… because I know you’ll always catch me.”
“Always,” he agrees before he drags his index finger down my nose.
The gentleness of his touch and the soothing nature of his promise lengthen my blinks. My muscles spasmed so much today, you’d swear I haven’t slept in a year.
“Get some sleep, dolcezza.” He pulls me back until my body is cocooned by his. “We’ll talk more in the morning.”
Giovanni rubs my arms soothingly, but I can’t sleep. My guilt is too firm. “If I had just listened to you, your unborn child’s life wouldn’t be in limbo.”
“Our unborn child.”
He firms his hold when the confidence in his tone causes a sob to rumble up my throat.
Then he tells me everything. How Valeria refused to take the hormones necessary for egg retrieval because they can cause some patients to gain weight, and the one-hundred-thousand-dollar payment she paid the nurse at the clinic to switch our files.
He even mentions how Luca was more an advocate of my rights than a co-conspirator.
When Luca unearthed the “apparent” mishap at the clinic, he wanted to come forward, but Valeria convinced him Giovanni wanted the procedure done as it occurred. Understandably, he was too fearful to go against a man as powerful as Giovanni.
That all changed when he saw me on my deathbed.
“Does that mean?” I take a breather when my voice cracks. If I cry, my mother will wake. She has a knack for knowing when her child is hurting.
As much as I love her, I don’t want her comfort right now.
Giovanni’s presence is more than enough.
It’s overwhelming in the best and worst ways when his fingers brush my cheek before sliding down to cradle my stomach. His touch is gentle and reverent, and when he speaks, the world stops spinning.
“It means this”—he cradles my stomach before his thumb moves in slow circles over my skin—“is ours. As it has always been.”
As his words ring on repeat in my head, everything fades until it’s just us and the God-honest truth.
I’m finally home.