Chapter 11
VALENTINA
My face is half submerged in a pillow by the time the sun rises.
A lazy smile stretches across my lips while I take a deep breath and register the faint odor of goose down, sweat, and hints of Luca’s musky cologne.
My body feels limp and soft, like molten caramel.
My limbs are weak. I stay still for the longest time, reveling in the never-ending afterglow of last night.
“Luca?”
There’s no answer. I raise my head and find the bedroom empty. The scents are all that’s left of him, and I feel cold all of a sudden, lonely, lonelier than I’ve ever felt in my life.
With a deep breath, I get out of bed and hop into the shower. I need the hot water running down my body to soothe my senses. Once I’m dry, I wrap myself in a robe and make my way into the living room.
Luca stands by the window, watching the sun come up over the city, tension in his jaw.
There’s a diary on the coffee table that I recognize because it’s mine. I wrote feverishly in it night after night a long time ago. It’s a piece of my past that’s come back to haunt me by the looks of it.
“Where did you get that?” I ask him.
He gives me a hard look—made harder by the fact that he’s already dressed. Fully dressed and devastatingly handsome in his three-piece, navy blue suit. His hair combed, his beard trimmed. A hint of musk and smoky wood emanating from his body, tickling my nose.
“It fell out of your bag,” he says.
I’m not sure how that’s possible. I keep the diary in a zipped inner pocket of my bag, because it’s there to remind me where I came from, not where I’m going. The anger takes over, clouding my vision with a red lens.
“You went through my bag,” I reply with a trembling voice. “Why?”
“You said his name.”
My breath falters. “What?”
“Stefano. You said his name.”
“When?”
I have spent so much time erasing him from my memory, how can that be?
Something doesn’t make sense here, something is missing.
I can feel a gap growing between Luca and me, and if I don’t bridge it quickly, it’ll turn into a chasm.
Given what we just signed up for, it could very well end up destroying both of us.
“Last night,” Luca says, looking away from me, “you dreamed about him.”
I can’t remember any of it. “Are you seriously doing this? Are we doing this? Arguing over a dream?”
“I’m not arguing. I’m stating a fact.”
“I dreamed about the father of my child, the man who broke my heart after I married his brother, and not necessarily by choice. Forgive me if my subconscious is still grappling with the details!” I snap.
“You were begging him not to go, not to leave you.”
I hear the undertone of pain in his voice, masked as anger. It tears me apart, too, because now I remember. It’s not a dream I had last night, it’s a memory that haunts me to this day, the moment that truly broke me.
“Is that why you went through my things?” I ask, trying to remain calm and composed while I gather my own thoughts.
“Perhaps it wasn’t the best way to handle it. But then I started reading,” Luca replies.
“How much did you read?” I ask, my blood boiling.
“Enough to understand what my brother meant to you. Enough to remind me that I married you to protect you and Michael. That’s it.”
There it is: The blow to my heart I should have seen coming. When did I ever get the kind of thing that would last, apart from my son? And Michael will always be there to remind me of a man who never deserved to be his father in the first place.
“How much did you read?” I ask again.
“I couldn’t make it past the third page, for what it’s worth. It pissed me off too much. I will apologize when I have a cooler head, Valentina. Mine is not cool right now.”
He hears me approaching and slowly turns around to look at me again. I see the subtle softening of his gaze. The yearning he is trying hard to hide. I see it because I feel it in myself, as well. We both carry deep wounds, and somehow, fate pulled us together.
I refuse to believe it was just so it could tear my soul open again.
“It wasn’t a dream, what you heard last night,” I reveal. “It wasn’t a dream per se, but a memory. After Stefano and I were together, he changed. It’s as if his mask fell off, and everything he’d said and done up to that point wasn’t real anymore.”
“What do you mean?” Luca asks with a furrowed brow.
I lean against the other side of the window, gazing out with a heavy heart. “You see, up to that point, Stefano had been the most charming man I’d ever met. I believed every word he said. He made me feel seen and wanted.
“For the first time, I thought I had a real shot at love. I thought we’d build something together. But after I was his, that night, he got out of bed, he was a different man. He was cold and filled with contempt, almost disgusted that he’d even touched me.
“I couldn’t believe it. I was shocked. Listening to the cruel words coming out of his mouth.
I didn’t know how to react,” I say. “So, I groveled. I denied reality and I begged him to stay. Even as he was putting his clothes back on, clasping that watch around his wrist, looking at me like I was nothing, I begged him not to leave, not to leave me.”
Luca doesn’t say a word, but his gaze darkens, unable to meet mine. It makes me feel like the morning Stefano left is happening all over again, the morning he destroyed me.
“That moment is a recurring dream of mine,” I tell Luca, “where I beg him not to leave, because if he leaves, then everything he just said to me is the truth, and I can’t handle the truth. That’s what I said to him.”
“What did my brother say?”
“He laughed and told me I’m a big girl and should take it like one,” I reply. “He also said that if I’m lucky enough, I’ll have his child to raise and keep me company if I miss him.”
“No,” Luca mutters and shakes his head.
“It’s the truth. That’s what your brother said.
I should take what he did as the single greatest compliment a woman like me could ever receive.
For five minutes, the great Stefano Petrucci considered me attractive enough to put a baby in me.
It’s all I’m good for, he said. And I, in my brokenness, I begged him to stay, I begged him not to leave. ”
My voice falters. Tears flood my eyes. I glance at my diary and remember the first few pages.
“I started writing in the diary a couple of days after he left me there,” I add, blinking back the tears. “If you couldn’t get past the third page, it means you never got to the good part, because the first ten or so pages were mostly just me begging God to bring him back to me.”
“Which is why I couldn’t keep reading,” Luca snaps.
“He’s dead,” I bluntly remind him.
It’s too much. He walks away, but I’m too raw on the inside, too tired of being the universe’s hacky sack, when I swore to myself I would never let a man make me feel like I’m not good enough. I hold my chin up in anger and defiance as I look at him.
“Say what you want, Luca, but I got over it. I got over him. I saw Stefano for what he truly was: a pernicious prick with an ego the size of the Chrysler Building, and nothing to show for it either. A man who took pleasure in hurting people just to piss off his perceived enemies. In my case, the target was always my stepfather. I was just a conduit.”
“My brother was a prick; I’ll give you that. But to say the things you claim he said…” Luca walks out of the living room, a trail of deep shadows lingering behind him.
I stare at the open doorway, tears streaming freely down my hot cheeks.
Our wedding night was supposed to pave the way for something better, something different. How did I walk into more pain and rejection?
My son’s laughter echoes from upstairs.
By the time I see Susie coming in with Michael in her arms, the two of them smiling and giggling and clearly eager to grab the day by its horns, I’ve wiped my tears and put on a bright grin. I’m ready to pick up the pieces of myself again.
“Good morning, sunshine!” I say, greeting my son.
I’m ready to brace for whatever comes next, even if it’s just more misery and loneliness in a marriage I never asked for, yet somehow, for some reason, I secretly wanted.