3. Giovanni
— ? —
Giovanni
The thing no one tells you about power is that it’s heavy.
“You’re distracted again.” Ludovica’s voice cuts through my thoughts as our car winds through the coastal roads toward her father’s compound. “Trouble at home?”
“No trouble.” I keep my voice flat, professional. “Just thinking about the timeline.”
“The timeline is on track.” She shifts closer, her knee brushing mine in a way that’s definitely not accidental. “Corrado’s people are ready to move. Another week, maybe two, and we’ll have everything we need on the eastern territories.”
I nod, filing the information away. But my mind is on Cielo - on the way she looked at me this morning when I tried to apologize, like I was a stranger wearing her husband’s face.
I did that. I put that look there.
“You’re doing it again.” Ludovica’s hand lands on my arm, her fingers pressing through the fabric of my sleeve. “Drifting away. Where do you go, Giovanni, when your body’s here but your mind isn’t?”
“Nowhere important.”
“Liar.” She smiles, all teeth and calculation. “You go home to her. In your head. Even when you’re sitting right beside me.”
“Ludovica-”
“It’s all right. I understand arranged marriages. The obligations, the formalities, the public face you have to maintain.” Her voice drops, intimate. “But you don’t have to maintain that face with me. I know what you really want.”
The assumption shouldn’t surprise me anymore.
I’ve let her believe it for months - that my marriage is cold, practical, a business arrangement between families rather than the consuming love it actually is.
It’s the only way to keep her talking, keep the intelligence flowing, keep building the case that will finally let me neutralize the Falcone threat.
But hearing her say it makes my stomach turn.
“What I want,” I say carefully, “is to finish this deal. Everything else can wait.”
“Can it?” Her fingers trail up my arm toward my shoulder. “We’ve been waiting for months, Giovanni. How much longer?”
I catch her wrist and remove her hand, gentle but firm. “As long as it takes.”
Something flickers across her face - surprise, maybe even hurt - but she covers it quickly with that polished smile.
“You’re so controlled,” she says. “So careful. But control can slip, you know. Even for men like you.”
“Not with you.”
“We’ll see.”
The meeting with Corrado drags on for hours.
I sit at his massive dining table, surrounded by men who’ve been trying to kill me or mine for most of my adult life, and I smile and nod and play the diplomat. The truce we’re operating under is fragile - an intelligence-gathering exercise disguised as alliance-building - but it’s held so far.
My phone sits in the security cabinet at the entrance, locked away with everyone else’s. Standard protocol for meetings like this. No recordings, no interruptions, no contact with the outside world.
The thought of Cielo trying to reach me and finding only voicemail makes something twist in my chest.
“You seem tense, Salvatore.” Corrado’s voice is genial, but his eyes are sharp. “Something on your mind?”
“Just eager to move forward. We’ve been circling each other for years. It’s time to build something real.”
“Something real.” He swirls his wine, considering. “My daughter speaks highly of you, you know. She says you’re the most focused man she’s ever met.”
“Ludovica is kind.”
“Ludovica is rarely kind. Which makes her praise all the more valuable.” He sets down his glass. “She believes you and I could be true allies. Partners, even. If certain… obstacles… were removed.”
The implication is clear. I keep my expression neutral.
“My marriage isn’t an obstacle. It’s a cornerstone.”
“Is it?” Corrado’s smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “Ludovica seems to think otherwise.”
“Ludovica is welcome to her opinions. But I know my own mind.”
The tension in the room thickens, but Corrado only laughs.
“Spoken like a man in love.” He raises his glass. “To clarity, then. And to the alliances we choose.”
I drink to the toast, but the wine tastes like ash.
“You should stay tonight.” Ludovica catches me as I’m leaving, her hand on my arm. “The meeting’s over. My father was pleased. We should celebrate.”
“My wife is waiting for me.”
“Is she?” Her voice sharpens. “I hear she’s been waiting quite a lot lately. Eating alone. Going to bed alone. One might think she’s used to your absence by now.”
“One might think wrong.”
“Giovanni.” She steps closer, and her perfume wraps around me - something heavy and floral that makes me think of funeral flowers.
“I don’t understand you. You have a wife who clearly bores you, a marriage that’s obviously dying, and you keep running back to it like a dog to a master who doesn’t deserve him. ”
“You don’t know anything about my marriage.”
“I know what I see. I know the way you look when you come to our meetings - relieved to be away from her. I know you’ve spent more time with me in the past month than you have with her.”
“That’s business.”
“Is it?” Her hand comes up to rest on my chest, right over my heart. “Because this doesn’t feel like business to me.”
I remove her hand. Again.
“Whatever you think you see,” I say quietly, “you’re seeing what you want to see. Not what’s actually there.”
Her face goes pale, then flushes with something between anger and humiliation.
“You’re lying to yourself, Giovanni. Not to me.”
“Goodnight, Ludovica. I’ll see you at the next meeting.”
I step back, putting distance between us, and walk toward the car without looking back. I can feel her eyes on me the whole way - sharp, calculating, reassessing. Whatever she decides about tonight’s conversation, I’ve given her nothing concrete. Nothing she can use.
But I’ve also made an enemy, and I’m not naive enough to think otherwise.
The drive home takes longer than it should.
I use the time to think - about Corrado’s veiled threats, about Ludovica’s barely concealed fury, about the woman waiting for me in a villa I promised would be a honeymoon refuge.
I’ve been failing her. I know that. Every day I spend in meetings instead of with her, every night I come home late smelling like cigarette smoke and Ludovica’s perfume, every promise I make and break - it’s eroding something I can’t afford to lose.
When I finally pull into the drive, the villa is dark.
Panic seizes me for one terrible moment - where is she, what’s wrong, did something happen - but then I see the soft glow of a lamp in the bedroom window, and I force myself to breathe.
She’s asleep. It’s late. That’s all.
I let myself in quietly and make my way to the bedroom. She’s curled on her side, facing away from the door, her hair spread across the pillow like dark water. The moonlight catches the plain gold band on her finger - her wedding ring, the one that matches mine.
I stand in the doorway and watch her breathe, and something in my chest twists painfully.
This. This is what it’s all for. The power, the deals, the endless maneuvering - all of it exists to protect this woman. To protect whatever family we might build together someday.
But I’ve been so focused on building walls against future threats that I’ve forgotten to be present for the woman those walls are supposed to protect.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll do better. I’ll cancel the morning meeting, stay home, remind her why she married me.
I slip into bed beside her, careful not to wake her, and press a kiss to her shoulder.
“I’m home,” I whisper.
She doesn’t answer. Maybe she’s asleep.
Or maybe she just has nothing left to say.
I wrap my arm around her and pull her close, and I try not to think about all the ways I’m failing the only person who matters.
I wake to find her already gone.
The sheets on her side are cold, which means she’s been up for a while. I find her in the kitchen, making coffee, and she doesn’t turn when I enter.
“You came home late.”
“I know. The meeting-”
“I don’t want to hear about the meeting, Giovanni.” She still doesn’t turn. “I don’t want to hear about any of it.”
“Cielo-”
“I called Delphine yesterday.” Her voice is flat, controlled. “I needed to talk to someone who actually answers their phone.”
The words land like a blow.
“I deserve that.”
“Yes. You do.” She finally turns, and her eyes are red-rimmed. “I’ve made a decision.”
My heart stops. “What kind of decision?”
“I’m going to give you one more chance.” She sets down her coffee cup, hard enough that liquid sloshes over the rim. “One more, Giovanni. Tonight. Dinner. Seven o’clock. Be here.”
“I’ll be here.”
“You say that every time.”
“This time I mean it.”
“You say that too.” She picks up her cup and moves toward the terrace. “But I’ve decided to believe you anyway. Because if I don’t - if I can’t trust you to show up when you say you will - then I don’t know what we’re doing here.”
She walks out before I can respond, and I stand alone in the kitchen, watching her go.
Tonight. I have to make tonight count.
I have to prove to her that I can still be the man she married.
At noon, one of the staff tells me Ludovica is here to confirm the afternoon meeting. I ask them to keep her in the hall while I call Beppe from the villa’s study.
“The star necklace,” I say. “Any progress?”
“Actually, yes.” There’s quiet satisfaction in his voice.
“Three years of dead ends, boss, but we finally caught a break. Got a lead this morning - the shop owner’s nephew, lives outside Florence now.
Says his uncle kept the piece after the shop closed.
Sentimental value, apparently. His wife made it before she died. ”
Three years. Three years since Cielo stopped in front of that window near the university, her face lit up at a gold chain with a small star pendant. Three years since I started hunting for something she mentioned once and never asked for.
“Can you get it?”
“Working on it. The nephew’s being cagey - says the old man doesn’t want to sell. I’m applying pressure, but it might take some persuasion.”
“I don’t have days, Beppe. I need it tomorrow.”
A pause. “That’s going to require some persuasion.”
“Then persuade. Whatever it costs, Beppe. This matters.”
“Understood.” Another pause, longer this time. “Boss, is everything-”
“Find the necklace. Call me when you have it.”
I end the call and turn back toward the window, but I’m not alone anymore. Ludovica is standing in the doorway of the study, her expression carefully arranged into pleasant curiosity.
“A necklace?” She crosses her arms, leaning against the doorframe. “That sounded urgent.”
“Private business.”
“Everything with you is private business.” She moves into the room, trailing her fingers along the edge of a bookshelf. “I couldn’t help overhearing. A star pendant? How romantic.”
I don’t answer. I’m already calculating how much she heard, what conclusions she might draw.
“You know,” she continues, her voice light, “I’ve always thought stars were such a beautiful symbol. Distant. Constant. Something you can wish on but never quite reach.”
She’s watching me with that particular intensity she gets when she thinks she’s figured something out. I can see the assumption forming behind her eyes - that I’m searching for a gift, that the desperation in my voice meant something personal.
She’s not wrong about that.
But if she thinks it’s for her, she’s wrong.
“The meeting this afternoon,” I say, changing the subject. “What time does your father expect us?”
“Three o’clock. But Giovanni-” She steps closer, and her hand comes up like she might touch my arm, then thinks better of it. “If you’re looking for something special, I know jewelers in the city. People who can find anything, no matter how rare.”
“I have my own contacts.”
“Of course you do.” Her smile is knowing, almost tender. “You always do everything yourself. It’s one of the things I admire about you.”
I turn back to the window, dismissing her, and after a moment I hear her retreat. Her footsteps fade down the hallway, but I suspect she’s filing this conversation away, adding it to whatever picture she’s building in her head.
Let her build. Let her assume. As long as she’s assuming wrong, she’s not looking in the right direction.
Beppe calls back before I leave for the three o’clock meeting.
“Found it,” he says without preamble. “The shop closed two years ago, but the owner kept the piece. Some kind of sentimental attachment - his wife made it before she died.”
“How much?”
“He didn’t want to sell at first. I had to be creative.”
“How creative?”
“Creative enough that he’s retiring to the coast with enough money to never work again.” Beppe’s voice carries a hint of amusement. “The necklace will be there by morning. Courier’s already on his way.”
“Good. Thank you, Beppe.”
“Boss?” He hesitates. “Whatever’s happening down there - whatever you need this for - I hope it works.”
“So do I.”
I end the call and stare out at the darkening sea.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll give her the necklace, and maybe it will be enough to start bridging the distance I’ve let grow between us. Maybe she’ll see it for what it is - proof that I remember, that I listen, that she’s never far from my thoughts even when I’m failing to show it.
Maybe it will be the beginning of making this right.
I just have to make it through one more night.