Chapter 5
Eight weeks later…
The quiet in my office was deliberate—a weapon. The air conditioner was set to nineteen degrees—cold enough to keep the mind sharp and uncomfortable enough to ensure that no one stayed longer than necessary.
Eight weeks since I walked out of that circus at the Duomo, Marco Valenti’s name had been permanently blacklisted from the industry. My brothers, in their protective rage, made sure he lost three international contracts in the first week.
I didn’t ask for that—I didn’t need to. My revenge was colder… it was success.
While Marco faded into obscurity, Ferraro Uomo soared.
I channeled the humiliation into every line of the quarterly balance sheet.
I closed the merger in Asia that my father had been hesitating to make for years.
I was relentless, focused, and, for the first time, fully in command, without the distraction of my “passionate” brothers.
I was the true Ferraro heiress: cold, logical, and unyielding.
“They’re backing off on the price of the leather, Signorina Ferraro.” Giorgio’s voice—my consigliere—came over the speakerphone.
I swiveled my black leather chair to face the glass wall of my top-floor office. Milan stretched out below me, a realm of stone and power.
“They aren’t backing down, Giorgio. They’re testing you. Tell them I accept the French competitor’s offer. Give them one hour to match it or lose the ten-year contract.”
“Signorina, that’s risky. The French…”
“Do it,” I cut in, my voice sharp as a razor.
I hung up the phone. Exhilaration pulsed through me. This was what I liked. The risk, the control, and the taste of victory… It was a whiskey stronger than anything Marco could offer me.
The thrill of victory faded. In its place came not panic at being discovered, but a familiar, frustrated rage. A resentment I’d been methodically swallowing, along with my breakfast, for the past eight weeks.
No. I slammed my fist down on the marble countertop. Not today!
My mind didn’t need to race or calculate. I knew perfectly well where I was.
Ever since the disaster at the Duomo, I’d used work as a drug. I hid beneath structured blazers, my mind in financial projections, and forced myself to ignore what was happening inside me. I’d treated my pregnancy as a problem to be solved “later.”
I’d told myself that the stress, the trauma of that public humiliation, might have… resolved the situation. But the nausea was familiar, and in the last few days, relentless.
The nausea returned, stronger, rising up my throat. It wasn’t the coffee, but the stubborn truth that refused to be ignored.
I rushed to the private bathroom attached to my office, closing the door behind me and muffling the sounds of the city.
I fell to my knees in front of the cold porcelain toilet, and every muscle tensed. There was nothing to vomit—only the bitter bile of the reality I’d tried to suppress.
I was shaking. Reflected in the polished marble was a woman in an expensive suit, on her knees, utterly wrecked.
The Heiress’s Secret. My “asset.” My “safety clause.” What I had seen as the final power move in my marriage had become, after the rejection, my greatest weakness.
I hadn’t told him on our honeymoon, because there was no honeymoon.
I hadn’t told him since then, because he had become a ghost.
I hadn’t told anyone. I hadn’t even told myself.
All I’ve done since he left me at the altar has been to try to forget, but the symptoms of what was still growing inside me showed just how impossible that was.
The rage, the work, the revenge… it was all a distraction.
The rush of power faded, leaving behind the panic I’d been keeping at bay.
I was still pregnant, carrying the child of the man who had publicly humiliated me, who had betrayed me so spectacularly.
I was on my knees on the marble floor of the office where I ruled, with the smell of my own vomit in the air, and reality hit me with the force of a punch.
I was the most powerful woman in Milan, but I was pregnant, alone, and completely terrified.