Chapter Fifteen
LIVIA
The retreat’s second day ends the way it began: with my nerves stretched thin and my body aching from drills I never trained for. By the time the last evacuation scenario wraps, my legs feel like they belong to someone else.
Dante’s firm pulled something during the final exercise.
A last-minute “security audit request” that disrupted our schedule and forced Valentino’s team to scramble.
Nothing came of it except wasted time and frayed tempers, but the message was clear enough.
He’s watching. He’s pushing. And he knows exactly which buttons to press.
Nico is finally down, exhausted from another day of racetrack diplomacy with the other kids at the lodge. I tucked him in twenty minutes ago, pressed a kiss to his hair, and came out here to find something, anything, to settle the static under my skin.
The cottage’s living area is dim, lit only by the lamp near the window and the blue wash of moonlight off the lake. Valentino stands near the kitchen counter, jacket gone, sleeves rolled, scrolling through something on his phone with the same controlled stillness he carries into every room.
I should go to bed. I know I should.
Instead, I cross my arms and lean against the doorway. “You could have told me about the audit request before I walked into that room.”
He doesn’t look up right away. “It wasn’t relevant to your role in the exercise.”
“Not relevant.” My voice comes out sharper than I intend. “Dante sent a team to crawl through compliance protocols and you didn’t think that was relevant?”
Now he looks up. “I handled it.”
“Of course you did.” I push off the doorway. “You handle everything. That’s the whole system, isn’t it? Valentino handles it, so nobody else needs to know or worry about it.”
His jaw tightens, just slightly. “Would you have preferred I let you walk in anxious for no reason?”
“I’d have preferred you treat me like a person who can handle information instead of a liability you’re managing.”
“You are not a liability.” His voice stays even, but there’s something underneath it now, a tightness in his tone that wasn't there a second ago “You are the reason I spent the entire day recalculating every exit route in this building.”
“Don’t do that.” I step closer. “Don’t make this about keeping me safe. This is about control. It’s always about control with you.”
“Me being in control is the only reason you and your son are safe right now.”
“Don’t bring Nico into this.”
“You brought him into this the moment you walked into my office.” The words land harder than he probably means them to, and I watch a flash of regret flicker across his face.
I should walk away. There’s a version of this night where I do exactly that, where I turn around and disappear down the hallway
Instead, I find myself saying “You think hiding behind protocols and exit routes makes you in control. But you’re not in control, Valentino. You’re just hiding. You hide behind control the way I hide behind jokes. At least I know that’s what I’m doing.”
For a long moment, he says nothing. The only sound is the low hum of the refrigerator and my own pulse, suddenly loud in my ears.
Then he sets his phone down on the counter, slowly.
“You think I don’t know what I’m doing.” It isn’t a question but I answer anyway.
“I think you’ve spent so long managing everyone else that you’ve forgotten how to just exist without an angle. Without a plan.”
“And you think jokes are a plan.” He takes a step toward me. “You think laughing your way through every hard conversation means you’re not also hiding. Ok then I will ask again, were we ever together in Venice?”
The air goes out of the room.
I open my mouth to deny or deflect, to do anything except stand here while that statement settles between us like a stone dropped into still water. But nothing comes out. Because he’s right, I'm hiding and we both know it, and there’s nowhere left to go from here except closer or away.
He’s close enough now that I can feel the heat radiating off him, can see the muscle ticking in his jaw, the way his eyes drop briefly to my mouth before snapping back up like he’s furious with himself for it.
“Valentino—”
“I know you’re hiding something.” His voice is barely above a whisper now. “I have known for days. And I keep telling myself it doesn’t matter. That whatever it is, it changes nothing.”
“Does it?”
“No.” The word comes out rough, almost angry, like he resents how true it is. “It doesn’t change anything. That’s the problem.”
And then his hand is at my jaw, tilting my face up, and I don’t have time to decide whether I’m going to let this happen before his mouth is on mine.
The kiss is not gentle.
It’s the kiss of two people who have spent two days circling each other, who have argued through three years of unspoken tension in the space of five minutes, and who have finally, finally run out of road.
His hand slides from my jaw into my hair, angling my head exactly where he wants it, and I grab the front of his shirt because I need something to hold onto or I am going to come apart right here on the kitchen floor.
He walks me back until my spine meets the edge of the counter, and the solid weight of him presses against me, and every single nerve ending I own lights up at once.
“This is a terrible idea,” I manage, against his mouth.
“I know.” He doesn’t stop. If anything, the words seem to loosen something in him, and his mouth moves to my jaw, my throat, the spot just below my ear that makes my breath catch audibly.
“We work together.”
“I know that too.” His hands find my waist, lifting me slightly, just enough that I’m sitting on the edge of the counter, and the new angle brings us even closer, his hips settling between my knees in a way that should be illegal in at least four countries.
“Valentino.” It comes out as barely more than a breath.
“Livia.” He pulls back just far enough to look at me, dark eyes nearly black in the dim light, and for a moment I think he’s going to stop. I think he’s going to apologize, step back, retreat into the self-control he wears like armor.
He doesn’t.
Instead, he kisses me again, deeper this time, and one of his hands slides beneath the hem of my shirt, fingers spreading warm against the bare skin of my waist. I feel the rough catch of his breath against my mouth, feel the precise control he prides himself on fraying at the edges, and something fierce and reckless wakes up in me in response.
I pull him closer. My fingers find the buttons of his shirt, and his hand tightens against my waist like he’s barely holding himself together, like one more push from me might be the thing that finally breaks him.
He walks us both away from the counter, toward the hallway, never breaking the kiss, like he can’t stand the few inches of distance it would take to look where we’re going.
My back finds the hallway wall, cool plaster against heated skin, and his thigh slides between mine, and the sound that escapes me is not one I recognize as belonging to myself.
“Tell me to stop,” he says against my throat, voice wrecked. “Tell me to stop, and I will.”
I don’t.
His mouth finds mine again, and his hand slides higher, and the careful, professional, six-feet-of-distance version of Valentino Ferretti is nowhere in this hallway.
What’s left is just heat and longing rising so close to the surface that the words are right there, right on the edge of my tongue – it was me in Venice.
I almost say it. God help me, I almost say it, with his mouth on mine and his hand splayed against my ribs and every part of me leaning into him like gravity has shifted and he’s the only solid thing left in the room
“Mommy?”
The word cuts through the haze like a blade.
We freeze. Both of us.
Valentino’s hand goes still against my skin, and for one suspended second neither of us moves, like if we just stay perfectly quiet the moment might rewind itself.
“Mommy, I had a bad dream.”
Nico’s voice again, small and thick with sleep, coming from down the hall.
And just like that, it’s over.
Valentino steps back so fast it’s almost violent, putting a full arm’s length of space between us in the time it takes me to blink.
His chest rises and falls hard, his hair mussed where my fingers had been, and for a moment he just looks at me, his expression raw and unguarded for a moment before the wall slides back into place.
“Go,” he says, voice rough. “I’ve got it.”
“Valentino, you don’t have to—”
But he’s already moving past me, down the hall, toward Nico’s door, and I’m left standing against the wall with my heart slamming and my lips still tingling and absolutely no idea what just happened, except that it happened, and it was the best and worst five minutes of my life.
I follow him down the hall on legs that don’t quite feel steady.
Nico’s door is cracked open, soft lamplight spilling into the hallway. When I reach it, I stop.
Valentino is sitting on the edge of Nico’s bed, his large frame folded carefully so he doesn’t take up too much space, one hand resting lightly on Nico’s back.
He’s speaking low, in Italian, the same gentle cadence I’ve heard him use exactly once before, in another lifetime, in another city, when he didn’t know I understood half the words.
“...non sei solo, piccolo. Ci sono io.”
You’re not alone, little one. I’m here.
Nico’s breathing evens out almost immediately, his small hand curling into the fabric of Valentino’s shirt, and Valentino doesn’t pull away.
He just sits there, steady, patient, present, in a way that has nothing to do with exit routes or evacuation drills or anything else he uses to keep the world at arm’s length.
I press my hand against the doorframe and watch them, my whole chest aching with melancholy.
I am not afraid he will be a bad father.
I am afraid he will be a good one.
Because if he’s good at this, if he’s gentle and steady and exactly what Nico needs without even trying, then I don’t know how I’m supposed to keep standing here, three feet away, pretending none of this is real.
Valentino glances up and finds me in the doorway. Neither of us says anything.
There’s nothing left to say that the last five minutes haven’t already said for us.