Lorenzo POV:
My first instinct was to burn the city down until she was found. My second was to call my lawyer.
“Fix this,” I commanded Matteo, my voice rough from disuse and rage.
“Lorenzo,” Matteo, my consigliere for fifteen years, said gravely. “I’ve reviewed the decree. It’s ironclad. She had you sign a voluntary, uncontested petition with a comprehensive settlement agreement. You waived all rights to contest or appeal. It’s a fortress. She’s gone.”
Rage erupted, a physical force. I slammed my fist into the wall, plaster cracking. “I don’t care what it says. Find a judge. Buy him. Threaten him. Make it disappear.”
“This isn’t about a judge,” Matteo said with infuriating patience. “This is about her. She played you, Lorenzo. Perfectly. She knew you wouldn’t look. She used your own power, your own dismissal of her world, as the weapon.”
His words were truth, and they only fed the fire. She thought she could just leave. Vanish. No one leaves me.
“I don’t give a damn,” I snarled. “I will not allow this.” It wasn’t just pride anymore. The ache in my chest was a cavern, a physical void where she had been.
I hung up and drove to Gabriel’s gallery myself. I stormed in, my presence sucking the air from the room. A young assistant froze, wide-eyed.
“Where is Gabriel?” My voice was deadly quiet.
Gabriel emerged from his office, his expression not fearful, but one of pure, icy contempt.
“Conti,” he said, the name a curse. “To what do we owe this displeasure?”
“Where is she?”
He actually laughed, a bitter, sharp sound. “Oh, the great Lorenzo Conti finally notices his collection is missing a piece?”
I took a step closer, using every inch of my height and reputation. “Gabriel. I am her husband.”
“Were,” he spat. “You were her husband. Do you have any idea what she learned, restoring those centuries-old corpses of art? Patience. Precision. And how to make something vanish completely from a vault everyone thinks is impenetrable. You were never her equal, Conti. You were just her most challenging project—a flawed artifact she has finally decided is beyond repair.”
The term flawed artifact hit me like a physical blow. My control wavered.
“She left me a note,” I said, the lie automatic, trying to regain ground.
“She left you a reckoning,” he corrected, his eyes blazing. “Do you know she collapsed the day after the opening? She was running on fumes, sick with stress for months, all for a night you couldn’t be bothered to attend.”
A sliver of ice pierced my gut. I’d noticed she was thinner, paler. I’d dismissed it as artistic temperament.
“She was ill?”
“She was more than ill, you selfish bastard,” Gabriel hissed, his composure breaking. “She was carrying your child.”
The world stopped.
Sound, breath, heartbeat—everything ceased. The air turned to cement in my lungs.
Pregnant.
My mind reeled. A child. An heir. My child. Alessia… A memory surfaced, blurred by whiskey and indifference. That night, weeks ago. It had been quick, impersonal. A duty. But it had happened.
A sickening wave of realization. The exhaustion. The illness. It wasn’t drama. It was life.
“What?” The word was a choked whisper.
“She was pregnant,” Gabriel repeated, venom in every syllable. “And she was so terrified of you, of the gilded prison you’d build around her and that baby, that she ran. She ran to protect your child from you.”
I stumbled back a step, my hand hitting the wall for support. The truth of his words was a sledgehammer, shattering the last of my arrogant fury, leaving only a raw, gaping wound.
I had not just lost a wife.
I had lost my child. A child I never knew existed.
“Where is she?” I asked again, but my voice was different now. Broken. Pleading. All the menace was gone, replaced by a desperate, clawing need. “Gabriel, please. I have to find them.”
He looked at me, his eyes cold and unforgiving as a winter lake.
“No,” he said, his voice final. “She is finally free. She is finally safe. You are the last person on earth who deserves to be near that child. You forfeited that right when you left her standing alone in a room full of pity.”
He turned his back and walked into his office, closing the door with a soft, definitive click.
It was the sound of my world ending.
I walked out of the gallery, my steps steady, my back straight. A perfect performance. At my car, I placed a hand on the cold roof to steady myself. My other hand came up, pressing hard against the center of my chest, as if to physically contain the sudden, seizing pain there. I bowed my head, taking three long, shuddering breaths that did nothing to fill the void.
Inside the car, I didn’t start the engine. I gripped the steering wheel, my knuckles bone-white, and let my forehead rest against it. For one full, silent minute, I stayed there.
Then I drove back to the empty penthouse. I went straight to her sterile studio and slid down the wall, sitting on the cold floor. I pulled out my phone, accessed the security feed I’d had Vito pull from the gallery that night.
There she was. Seeing the news photo on her phone. Her face didn’t crumple in anger or sorrow. It just… settled. Into a deep, weary understanding. As if a long-held hypothesis had finally been proven. Then she lifted her chin, and the perfect, public smile slid back into place.
I watched that smile. Then I closed my eyes, pressed the glowing screen of the phone against my sternum, and sat there in the dark, chasing a phantom warmth.
