Meanwhile Solace
Meanwhile
Solace
As she scurried toward the secluded estate ahead, Valentina’s ankle twisted. Her breath came in shallow gasps, one hand pressed against her side, nausea rising as sticky crimson clung to her fingers.
She stumbled up the stone steps and slammed her hand against the doorbell. Sagging against the frame, vision dimming, she forced her eyes to stay open.
Footsteps. Then the door swung open.
Silence.
“I need your help,” Valentina breathed, swaying.
“I can see that. I just don’t understand why I should help you.” Francesca crossed her arms.
“Because your Madonna cost me. It…it was the last straw.” She panted. “I tried to control them. But…”
“They turned on you?”
“Yes.” Valentina clenched her jaw.
“Terrible feeling, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t…leave you bleeding.”
“No, not on the outside.”
Silence.
“Please, Fran. There’s no one…else I can trust.”
Francesca narrowed her eyes. “And you trust me?”
A beat.
“Yes.”
Valentina grimaced. Nausea crawled up her throat. The world spun, and her knees buckled. But instead of hard stone slamming against her, warm hands caught her.
She slumped into Francesca’s hold, breath ragged as pain tore through her.
Tears sprang to her eyes, not just from the pain or the last twenty-four hours—but from the past eight weeks, the loss of her empire. Her one genuine gesture, her single moment of remorse, had cost her everything. Without it, they might not have turned against her.
The tears and the lump in her throat weren’t just for the wreckage. They originated in Francesca’s familiar scent flooding her senses, in her warmth, in the unrelenting ache of proximity. That closeness hurt more than the stab wound in her side, more than all the bruises webbing her body.
It was a dagger twisting in a place she’d tried to cauterize.
The warehouse had been bad. But seeing Francesca in the flesh, so close, right in front of her, had cracked something open. Maybe that was why she’d returned the Madonna.
She’d never been able to resist Francesca. Which was why she’d stayed away.
But her body remembered. Even bruised and battered, it recalled what Francesca once meant, and it trembled at the memory.
She hated this longing. How delusional to think she’d razed it all to the ground, yet like seeds, these feelings had hidden inside.
The emotion swelling inside was almost foreign. Weak. Something she’d never allowed again. But Valentina was even feebler, and she let herself be held, allowed Francesca’s solace to once more wash over her like a balm.
“Oh, Val,” Francesca murmured, pressing a kiss against the crown of her head.
Valentina wept, clutching Francesca’s ivory blouse—staining it red.