Chapter 27
Valentina
I stumble home, my heart heavier than a sky that’s lost its sun.
I drive through the busy Villadorata streets, unshed tears blurring my vision, replaying the scene over and over in my mind, blindly hoping for a different outcome.
An outcome in which I still have Max in my life.
An outcome in which he looks in my eyes and tells me he understands, that he forgives me for what he knew I had to do.
That he loves me.
But no matter how many times I roll through the scene, it always ends with the look of shock and betrayal on his face.
His sending me away.
It being over between us.
Part of me knew this day would come, the day in which my Fabiana Fontaine mask was forced to drop, and I became me again. I thought I would be the one to control it. I would be the one to win. But now that it’s happened, I never imagined it would hurt this much.
I may have been pretending to be someone else, but my love for Max is real.
I fell for the man he is, the man who has qualities the length of the longest river.
I may not have shared all the details of my life, but what I did share was the truth.
He saw the real me, even if he thinks it was all lies.
What started out as a need for protection, at first a sanctuary from what had become of my life, ended up as a prison, and in the end, I was too busy protecting myself that I destroyed the one thing worth protecting.
The cruel irony is that I was finally ready to tell him the truth when it was ripped away from me. How would he have reacted if I’d had the chance to tell him myself? Would he have been this hurt, this angry, this betrayed?
I’ll never know.
When I park outside our dilapidated house, my instinct is to run upstairs and hide, bury my face in my pillow, and sob until my tears are all dried up.
Instead, I pull the article up on my phone and read the whole thing from start to finish.
It was written by Miranda Thorne, the journalist I’d met at the state dinner, who got my back right up.
She’d dropped hints that she knew more about me than I’d want her to know, and it turns out she was right on the money.
But where did she get her information? No one knows who I really am. I’ve been Fabiana Fontaine for years.
I open a social media app and do a quick search for Fabiana Fontaine. A bunch of people are already talking about Miranda Thorne’s revelations, some questioning if it’s true, some deciding it has to be, and I should be thrown in jail.
Jail!
I click my phone off. I can’t take it right now, not when my whole world has imploded around my ears.
I need a hug from the one person who knows everything there is to know about me.
I find her in the conservatory, watering the orchids she’s always loved. She takes one look at me and drops her watering can, opening her arms and wrapping them around me.
“My darling girl, what’s happened?” she asks, and the concern in her voice brings out the tears I’d been holding in. I bury my head in her shoulder as she soothes me with her words, my shoulders heaving as I let it all out.
My public exposure as a fraud.
Max’s reaction to learning the truth.
That I was trapped in an impossible position.
The finality of his words when he told me to leave.
“Shall we have a nice cup of tea?” Nona suggests when finally, my tears stop.
“Okay,” I reply, my voice hoarse.
A few minutes later, we’re at the kitchen table, and Nona’s pouring us both a cup from her favorite teapot.
She pushes a cup and saucer across the table. “Take a sip,” she instructs, and I do as she says, the hot liquid sliding down and warming my throat. “Now, tell me all about it.”
“A journalist called Miranda Thorne discovered my real identity and published it in The Post, along with a photo of Max and me kissing.”
“Oh, how dreadful! Did she name you?”
I nod.
“And did she connect you to your father and what happened to him?”
I nod again.
“How did she know? We’ve been so careful.”
“I’m not sure, but it’s all over social media now. Fabiana Fontaine is officially dead.”
She gives my hand a squeeze. “Oh, sweetheart. Does the palace know?”
A stab of pain shoots through me as I picture Max’s face. “I was there when Princess Amelia came in to tell Max about it. He…he didn’t take it well.”
And there we have it, the understatement of the year.
“Did you explain to him why you did what you did?”
“Of course I did, but he didn’t want to know.” I toy with my teacup. “He sent me away.”
“He’s shocked, that’s all. He’ll come around. You two were building something special together.”
I press my lips together, my heart tight in my chest. “I don’t think he will, Nona. He was pretty hurt.”
The way he looked at me was like a lightning strike, straight to my heart.
I hurt him. He put his trust in me. I might have wanted to tell him who I really was, but the truth of the matter is I hadn’t.
Even when we shared the bed at the inn, when we kissed that first time in the ball pit, when he drove me back to the city.
I put it off. I let my fear get the better of me.
And look at how that worked out.
His words ring in my ear. There is nothing you can say that will change the way I feel.
“I don’t think I’ll be hearing from the prince any time soon, Nona. Not unless he’s going to take legal action or something.”
“Legal action,” she repeats, appalled. “Why on earth would he do that?”
“They would say I got the job on false pretenses,” I reply with a defeated shrug. And more than that, he told me things he hadn't told anyone. Now, seeing me as a liar, he'll be worried that I’ll do something with those secrets. Sell them. Profit from them.
I would never do that. I'll take them to the grave.
I'd give him my word on that if I thought it meant anything to him.
"If he truly loves you, the you that you've shown him, then a name won't change that.”
I let out a heavy sigh. “It already has.”
“Then he’s not a man who’s worthy of you.”
I manage a small smile through my malaise. “Thanks, Nona. You’re always in my corner.”
“As far as I’m concerned, there are no other corners to be in.”
My phone buzzes, and I pull it from my purse to see my boss’s name on the screen.
“I'm not sure I can face her right now,” I say, wrestling with whether I should answer or not.
“Well, then don't. She'll keep. You're allowed to feel sad about this, and in your own time.”
I turn the phone over on the table, but no sooner has the ringing stopped than it starts up again.
I shoot Nana a look.
“Switch it off,” she instructs. She pours some fresh tea into my cup, and I take another sip. “Your father never stole a single penny. I would stake my life on it.”
“Nona,” I warn. “Do you mind if we don't? I'm not in the mood for conspiracy theories.”
“There are things about that time. Inconsistencies.”
I close my eyes. Nona has never accepted what happened, and when she gets on a roll, there’s no stopping her.
“Things that were never looked into properly. That Lord Blackwood always resented your father's influence with the King.”
This gets my attention. “Lord Blackwood? As in Cyril Blackwood?”
“Yes, the snake. He always had it in for your father, right from their time in boarding school.”
“I met him at a dinner at the palace just over a week ago.”
Was that only last week?
“Dreadful man. He bought our family land, and at a bargain basement price, as well.”
“Did he?”
“Your father was innocent. Someday the truth will come out. Mark my words.”
“I’m not even sure it matters anymore. The damage is done. Max will never trust me again.”
There’s a loud rat-a-tat-tat on the door, and Nona and I both look at one another in surprise.
I push myself to my feet. “I’ll get it.” I make my way down the hallway and pull open the front door, only to be faced with not only my boss, looking as frazzled as someone with their finger in an electric socket, but a horde of other people, flashes going, people calling my name—both Valentina and Fabiana.
“Come on, let me in,” Judith says, her voice high with panic as she pushes past me into the hallway, leaving a waft of perfume in her wake.
Immediately, I slam the door shut behind her. “What the heck?”
“You, my dear, have caused quite the ruckus,” she says, her bright red pantsuit crumpled and her thick-rimmed hot pink glasses askew.
“How do they even know where I live?”
She finds a hallway mirror and straightens herself out. “Because everyone knows who you really are now, my dear girl,” Judith responds before she turns to me and says, “It would have been nice to have been clued in.”
“About that.” I begin when Nona’s voice calls from the kitchen.
“Val? Who is it?”
“It’s Judith Giovanni, my boss,” I call back.
She nods in the direction of the kitchen. “Come on then. Let’s meet your grandmother, shall we, Valentina Romano?”
She marches down the hallway, one hand held in the air. “Come! You can tell me all about it.”
Judith Giovanni is not someone to argue with, and even though I’m certain she’s here to fire me—or worse—I do as she says, reaching the kitchen, where I introduce her to Nona.
“I can see where your granddaughter gets her fine features,” Judith says, making Nona smile. “Now, do you have anything stronger than tea? That mob out there was intense.”
A handful of minutes later, we’re in the living room, a decanter of whiskey on the coffee table, from which Judith has already had her first glass and is onto her second.
I stand at the window and pull back the lace curtains to see a mess of people outside, with television vans and journalists and photographers as well as members of the public, all hoping to catch a glimpse of me, the woman who duped a prince.
“You look like a Valentina,” Judith says as she eyes me from across the room. “You're not a natural blonde, are you?”
“No, I’m not,” I take a seat opposite her. “It's part of my disguise. I don't actually need glasses either.”
“As far as disguises go, it's not exactly high-tech, is it?” she replies before she takes another sip of her drink. “Jolly good whiskey.”
“It's about a hundred years old,” I reply. “And as for my disguise, the last time anyone knew I was Vittorio Romano’s daughter, I was twelve.”
“And you've changed a lot since then,” Judith finishes for me.
“She was a cute twelve-year-old who blossomed into a beauty,” Nona says with pride in her voice.
“Well, you're certainly in a pickle now. Lying to us all about who you really are, and getting caught kissing a prince no less.”
I cast my eyes down, my heart throbbing. “You're here to fire me.”
“Fire you? Are you quite mad? You're the hottest thing in the country right now. You've seen it yourself outside. Everyone wants a piece of you.”
I look back up at her in surprise. “But I lied to you about who I am.”
With a flick of her wrist, her gold bangles jangle. “Semantics, my dear girl. Yes, I would have preferred to have been given a heads-up, particularly when it all blew up. But you did what you had to do to survive. I admire that. It shows tenacity and determination.”
“See, Val? Not everyone is against you,” Nona says.
Just the royal family and about thirty reporters currently taking up residence outside.
Never one to mince her words, Judith replies, “There are a lot who are against you, however, but that's what makes this the story of the year. Not since Princess Amelia and Ethan Roberts were duped into a reality television program has the nation been so enraptured. And we learned about it all only today! Imagine what the next weeks will bring.”
I groan. Imagine.
“I'm not sure I want to be a story, let alone the biggest story since the Princess Amelia reality TV palaver,” I say.
“You don’t have a choice in the matter.” Judith places her glass back on the coffee table and leans her elbows on her knees. “First things first. What happened between you and the prince? Was it just a kiss? Or was it something more?”
I flick my gaze to Nona. She gives a brief head nod. “Not just a kiss,” I say.
Judith's face lights up. “Marvellous! Would you be willing to write about it for the paper?”
I shake my head vehemently. I've already hurt Max enough. The last thing I want to do is go public about what happened between us. “I won't do that.”
“We’ll pay you well. You name the price.”
“That story is not for sale.”
“What will you do then?” she asks.
“I don't know,” I reply truthfully. “I've hardly even caught my breath after Miranda Thorne’s revelation today.”
Judith harrumphs. “I can't stand the woman. She's made a deal with the devil, if you ask me. She'll get her comeuppance.”
“One can only hope,” Nona admonishes.
“While you work out what you're going to say about you and the prince, we will pay you handsomely for Valentina Romano’s full exclusive story.”
“Do you mean about what happened with her father?” Nona asks.
“About all of it. The country now knows that my top journalist not only had a rather thrilling love affair with Ledonia’s most eligible bachelor, but she’s also the daughter of a disgraced lord and has been in hiding for years. It’s gold!”
“It’s not gold. It’s my granddaughter’s life,” Nona grinds out.
“Of course it is.” Judith drains her glass and rises to her feet. “Have something on my desk by the end of the week, Valentina.” She pauses. “Valentina. I’ll need to get used to that.”
I stand. “The story won’t be about what happened between the prince and me.”
“Make it about the real you and your father, and we’ll see about that later. Now, it was a pleasure to meet you, Lady V, and you, as it happens, Valentina.” She marches out of the living room only to reappear. “Is there a back door? I’d rather not have to fight through the rabble again.”
I take her to the back door where she reminds me to send my story to her, and then rushes away, leaving only a cloud of her perfume in her wake.