Chapter 12
LUCA
Ifind Victor at the tennis club, where he hangs out every morning before going into the office.
He gives me a worried look when he sees me coming, which makes me realize I’m wearing a murderous look on my face.
Given the anger coursing through me, it takes considerable effort to calm down enough to carry on a conversation.
“Did you know?” I ask as I take a seat next to him at the table.
We’re next to a green-paved tennis court, where two other members are playing.
“Did I know what?” Victor replies, halfway through peeling an orange.
Judging by his sweat-drenched polo shirt and sun-kissed face, he’s already played his usual match. He’s moved on to the light breakfast part of his routine, which consists of fresh fruit and a protein bar.
I’m restless and squirm in my seat. “About what Stefan said to Valentina the morning after they were together.”
Victor glances at me curiously. “Where is this coming from?”
“I’ve been patient with you long enough, old man,” I snap. “I know you and Stefano were close. I know he confided more in you than he ever confided in me, probably because he knew I’d tear him a new one for every dumb decision he ever made.”
“And I didn’t,” he says and shakes his head in dismay.
“No, you didn’t. You gently cajoled him, at best, given your position. One wrong word, one wrong move, and you could find yourself in hot water with his unpredictable temper. I don’t blame you for treading carefully.”
“Then why are you so pissed off about it?” He raises an eyebrow while simultaneously tearing into the Sicilian blood orange with noticeable enthusiasm. “Stefano had a way about him, I guess. I could never truly be mad at him.”
“That’s because you didn’t read what Valentina wrote in her diary. The way he treated her—”
“You’re talking about the morning after, right?”
I stare at him. “Yes.”
“When he told her she should be grateful if she ends up pregnant from the affair.”
My stomach drops. “Something along those lines, yes. So, you knew.”
“I knew,” he sighs deeply. “It was the first time I had the urge to slap some sense into Stefano. I realized it wouldn’t change a thing. He was too focused on hurting Mauro Mancuso to care about anything or anyone else, the self-absorbed fool.”
“Damn it,” I say under my breath. I run a hand through my hair, trying to focus on the tennis game for a few moments to distract myself.
“What’s wrong? What’s bothering you?” Victor asks. “It’s not about Stefano. You already knew how cruel and mean he could be, how cruel he was to Valentina.”
“I knew, but I didn’t have the details of their conversation.”
“That’s not it. Something else is bugging you, son. What is it?”
I give him a long, almost pained look. “I may have lashed out at her earlier. She didn’t deserve it.”
“And right after your wedding night,” he sighs. “That’s more or less history repeating itself as far as Valentina is concerned, wouldn’t you agree?”
“I flipped out. Jealousy got the better of me. Fucking hell, Victor. I’m jealous of a dead man.” And it feels so strange to say those words out loud. “I’m jealous of my dead brother, and I lashed out at Valentina because of it.”
Victor takes a deep breath and finishes the blood orange before he gets to cutting a kiwi in half.
“I swore I would keep her safe and protected, not miserable,” I mutter.
“No, you swore you’d keep her and your nephew safe and protected, not that you would fall for her, which you clearly have. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” Victor concludes.
I glare at him. “I didn’t plan for any of this to happen.”
“Of course not, but love has a way, it always has a way,” he replies.
“The truth is, Valentina is a special woman. The once-in-a-lifetime kind of woman, and you know it, which is probably why you’re so angry about the way Stefano treated her and why you’re lashing out in the first place.
She makes you feel everything more intensely, doesn’t she? ”
My phone pings. I’m in no mood for early business updates from Raquel. Not right now, while I’m trying to figure out a way to repair what I may have broken.
“If I let this happen, she becomes my weakness,” I tell Victor. “And given where we are right now with the others, with Mancuso…”
“You can’t have weaknesses of any kind,” he replies. “That’s what you keep telling yourself, isn’t it?”
“It’s the truth.”
“It’s your truth, Luca. Not the actual truth.”
The words ring true in my head, but their meaning carries too much weight for someone like me.
For my whole life, I’ve had to fight hard to build this wall around me, yet Valentina managed to poke a hole right through it, and she isn’t even aware of what she did.
If anyone else finds that crack, they’ll certainly take advantage of it.
And if they succeed, it could upend everything.
But I can’t afford to fail, not when Valentina’s and Michael’s lives depend on me.
While listening to the monotonous sound of the rackets hitting the ball again and again, I check my phone out of idle curiosity. Then I notice the message that just came in.
From an unknown sender, with an image attachment.
I tap on the image. It’s a GoPro angle. There’s a reflection in the glass, but it’s not complete.
It shows a portion of a man dressed in black, holding a gun with a silencer mounted on it.
My blood runs cold. I recognize the glass panels on which his image is reflected.
The white wooden frame. The brass doorknob and the magnolia tree behind him.
“Shit,” I hiss and jump from my seat.
“What is it?” Victor asks.
“Trouble,” I reply and run out.
There’s no time. No time to think. To fear. No time to expect the worst that’s about to happen anyway. There’s only time for me to react, to jump into my car and call Eddie while I dash through the city like a bat out of fucking hell.
Someone sent me a photo from my house.
“Son of a bitch,” I snarl as I storm into the mansion.
Eddie comes out from the kitchen at the far end of the hallway, looking downright confused. “Mr. Petrucci, are you sure about this?”
“I’m fucking sure!”
The house seems quiet. It’s flooded with sunlight and heavily guarded, just as always.
The security crew has already done a sweep of the premises, but they haven’t found anything out of the ordinary.
Not even a trace of a stranger anywhere.
My blood boils because I understand the purpose of that message.
It was meant to scare me, and it fucking worked.
“It’s clear, Boss,” Eddie reiterates. “I checked the security footage from earlier, too. There’s nothing. It must’ve been a doctored photo. It’s someone trying to mess with your head.”
That thought did cross my mind, but in my panic, in my terror of losing Valentina and Michael, I didn’t leave any room for that particular seedling to grow. Now, however, filled with clarity, I can feel its branches stretching and reaching for a sky. I know the why. I need to figure out the how.
“Eddie,” I say, with infinitely more calm than before I came in.
“Yes, sir.”
“Where’s Valentina?”
“She’s upstairs in Michael’s room. I checked. They’re good. Just playing.”
I nod slowly. “Do a third sweep and check all the motion sensors. Get the tech guys to pull a complete diagnostic of the entire security network, then change all the passwords and access codes.”
“Will do, sir.”
“And have someone look through the footage of camera BY-3 for the past seventy-two hours,” I add. “I need stills of every motion-activated event in that angle, specifically.”
Eddie’s brows furrow. “That’s where the photo was taken?”
“Yes. Actually, give me a seven-day footage comb-through, along with the stills, just to be sure. Someone definitely took that photo; they probably didn’t take it today.”
Once Eddie is off to do a third sweep with the rest of our crew, I make my way up the stairs and head straight for Michael’s playroom.
Now that Valentina and I share the master bedroom, I had another room set up specifically for the boy right next to ours.
During the day, if he isn’t outside playing in the garden, he hangs out in here—playing, learning, developing precious skills.
Today, from what I gather, he’s building a small town on a plastic tray with colored lumps of Play-Doh, while his mother assists him, giggling and adding little humans in the streets.
“There we go,” Valentina says, sitting cross-legged next to the boy. “It looks a lot livelier, don’t you think?”
“This is Gary,” Michael replies, pointing at one clay person.
“Gary?” Valentina laughs, then looks up at me. Her humor fades, quickly replaced by a pained frown, before she shifts her focus back on Michael. “What does Gary do?”
“He’s the boss,” Michael replies.
Slowly and carefully, with deep, measured breaths, I walk in and sit down on the floor with them. The Play-Doh town separates us, and I take a few moments to analyze the craftsmanship of their colorful, joyful little project.
“Gary’s the mayor,” I chime in. “Right, Michael?”
The boy gives me a bright smile. “The mayor!”
“What’s the name of the town, though?” I ask.
Michael and Valentina exchange glances. Valentina then looks at me, her gaze softer, warmer, almost welcoming me back into the fold. This cannot count as an apology on my part. I need to do better. But for now, I dare not disturb this fragile balance between us.
“We haven’t picked a name for it yet,” she tells me. “Maybe you can offer a suggestion.”
“How about Michaelville?”
The boy thinks about it for a moment, his little fingers fiddling with a piece of white clay, which he shapes into a ball, placing it in the middle of his composition.
“Pretty!” he exclaims. “Michaelville!”
“Alright, I think we all agree on Michaelville then,” I exclaim, almost laughing.
Time seems to stand still for the sweetest moment as I take it all in.
The scene before me is something I wish never to forget.
Valentina, beautiful in her yellow sundress, her curves making my heart beat faster, while her rich brown hair falls over one shoulder in shades of chocolate.
My nephew with his lush curls, giggling and playing without a care in the world.
My hand on the carpet, so close to his and bigger. The hand of the protector, one would say. The hand of the man who is going to keep them safe, who is going to make them happy and whose only goal is to give them reasons to smile.
“Why’d you come back?” Valentina asks at one point. “I thought you were angry.”
“I’m only angry at myself,” I calmly reply. “I just needed to see you.”
“Oh,” she whispers and lowers her gaze.
Her shyness gets to me every damn time. The way we lose ourselves in each other’s eyes, until she is overwhelmed by the intensity and looks away, just so she can breathe again. It’s undeniable, my effect on her, just as hers is on me. There is no turning back, and no desire to do so either.
But going forward, I require balance.
I require her body glued to mine and a smile on my nephew’s round face always. I want this house filled with laughter and light. The image of the man downstairs with a gun haunts me. However, it makes parts of me click, feeding a darkness Valentina can never know about.
She leans forward. “What is it, Luca?”
“Nothing you need to worry over,” I swiftly reply, then take a piece of red Play-Doh to join their gang. “What am I building, Mrs. Petrucci?”
“Anything you want,” Valentina says with a delicate smile.
And I know it’s supposed to be an all-encompassing statement, her way of telling me she trusts me enough to let me do what needs to be done. I just hope she never learns what that ultimately means.