Chapter 8
EIGHT
VALENTINA MUNIZ
His words hit me like a blade—cold, precise—tearing through skin and reopening wounds I’d spent years convincing myself had healed.
For one long, agonizing second, everything around me froze.
I was back in that cathedral, standing on the altar in a perfect white dress, drowning in public humiliation under hundreds of eyes filled with judgment and pity.
His eyes most of all.
Cold. Cruel. Empty of any trace of the man I had once loved.
Tears burned behind my eyes, threatening to spill. I tightened my grip around the sign until the wooden stick bit into my palms, using the sting to anchor myself back in the present.
After all the years I’d spent erasing Enrico Ferrara—scrubbing him from my life, my thoughts, my feelings—he was here.
Right in front of me.
I had sworn I’d never allow that man to have power over me again.
And yet seeing him in flesh and arrogance, so close and so untouchable, made me realize how naive that vow had been.
One look was enough to make my legs tremble, my heart hammer too fast.
Enrico watched me with absolute cold, cruelty curled into the corners of his perfect mouth—exactly as he had on the day he destroyed me at the altar. He expected me to shrink. To crumble. To break the way I had before.
And every fiber of my body begged me to.
But I forced my mind to remember: I wasn’t that girl anymore.
I was a mother.
The mother of the daughter he rejected before she even took her first breath.
I squared my shoulders. Lifted my chin. I pulled courage from every place inside me where fear had once lived. My eyes still shone with tears I refused to shed—but my voice came out steady, clear, and defiant.
“And you’re exactly the same, Enrico,” I said. “Arrogant. Cruel. Incapable of seeing anything beyond your own ego.” I held his gaze, unblinking. “But this time you don’t win. Not here.”
A flash of surprise crossed his eyes—quick, almost invisible—before it was replaced by something colder.
Fury.
He wasn’t used to being challenged. Not by anyone he considered beneath him.
And especially not by me.
His expression sharpened into something dangerous. He took a controlled half-step closer, meant to intimidate, meant to make my instincts scream.
My heart pounded harder.
I didn’t move an inch.
“You still don’t understand, do you?” he murmured, his voice a low threat meant only for me.
“There is no scenario in this world where you beat me, Valentina. Not in this. Not in anything.” His mouth curved, faint and cruel.
“I exposed the fraud you are once. I won’t hesitate to do it again.
Accept it. Save yourself the embarrassment. ”
The words cut—but this time I used the pain like fuel.
“I’m not afraid of you,” I said, steadying my voice around the truth. “Not anymore.” I let every syllable land like stone. “And you are not destroying my life again, Enrico.”
A heavy silence settled over the street.
The protesters had gone quiet, watching us with fascinated attention. Enrico seemed to realize we had an audience—and it only made him angrier.
His eyes narrowed as he looked me up and down, searching—calculating—trying to find a weakness he could press until I bled.
“We’ll see how long that courage lasts,” he said quietly, almost amused.
Then, slowly, he turned his back on me and walked toward his car, his arrogance intact, his dominance performed like instinct.
I watched him go without moving, holding my face steady, my posture unbreakable, until he was inside the vehicle and it rolled away down the street.
Only when the car vanished completely did my body loosen a fraction and allow me to breathe.
My heart was racing.
My hands trembled.
But I had faced him.
I had stood my ground—even if only for a few minutes.
Júlia approached quietly and touched my shoulder, worry in her eyes.
“Val… what was that? Are you okay?”
I blinked fast, forcing the last of the tears back. Then I turned to her—and to everyone still watching.
“I’m fine,” I said firmly, lifting my chin toward the crowd.
“And now more than ever, we need to stay strong. If I already had reasons to fight before, now I have even more.” My voice carried, clear and steady.
“That company—and its arrogant CEO—have no idea what we’re capable of.
We’re not backing down, no matter what they do or say. ”
Heads began to nod. People murmured agreement. Then applause rose—immediate support, fierce and real.
It strengthened me like a spine sliding into place.
I had changed.
I had grown.
And if Enrico Ferrara didn’t retreat, he was about to learn the hard way:
I wasn’t someone he could crush and forget anymore.