VALENTINA POV'S
The email landed in my inbox at 6:47 a.m., while I was still in the kitchen pouring coffee that had gone cold hours ago.
Luca was asleep in his room, the soft hum of his white noise machine drifting down the hallway like a lullaby I hadn’t earned the right to hear anymore.
I opened the message on my phone, standing barefoot on the marble floor that felt colder than usual.
One line.
I accept your terms. But I’m coming to New York. We talk face to face. No lawyers. No board. Just us.
I read it again, slower this time, letting each word settle into the places where old wounds still ached.
No apology.
No excuses.
Just a demand wrapped in velvet.
The same velvet he’d used to whisper promises against my skin in Positano, promises that dissolved the moment he boarded that plane.
I set the phone down carefully, as if it might shatter if I moved too fast.
Then I walked to the window and watched the city wake up below me, the first streaks of light turning the buildings into gold and shadow.
My reflection stared back from the glass hair tangled, eyes tired, mouth set in a line that had become permanent over the last five years.
I looked like a woman who’d learned to survive.
I looked like a mother who’d learned to fight.
I looked like someone who was tired of fighting alone.
I picked up the phone again and dialled Maria.
She answered on the first ring, voice thick with sleep.
“Boss?”
“Clear my schedule for the next forty-eight hours,” I told her. “No meetings. No calls. Nothing. And tell the board the buy-back offer is on hold until further notice.”
A pause.
Then, “You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
I hung up.
The apartment was quiet except for the distant hum of traffic far below.
I walked to Luca’s room, pushed the door open just enough to see him curled on his side, one small hand clutching the stuffed lion he’d named King.
My chest tightened.
I closed the door again and went back to the kitchen.
This time I made fresh coffee.
Two cups.
I knew he’d be here soon.
I knew because Matteo De Luca never backed down from a challenge.
I knew because the man who’d funded my company in secret for four years wasn’t the type to let a forty-eight-hour deadline stop him.
And I knew because, deep down, in the place I kept locked away from everyone including myself, I wanted him to come.
Not because I forgave him.
Not because I needed him.
Because Luca deserved to know the other half of where he came from.
Because I was tired of carrying the weight of the past alone.
Because some part of me the part I hated admitting existed still remembered what it felt like to be loved by him, even if that love had come with a crown and a price I couldn’t afford.
I poured the second cup.
Black.
No sugar.
The way he liked it.
Then I sat at the island, stared at the steam rising in slow spirals, and waited.
The doorbell rang at 7:32 a.m.
I didn’t move right away.
I let it ring twice.
Let the sound echo through the penthouse like a warning.
Then I stood up, smoothed my shirt, and walked to the door.
I opened it.
Matteo stood there in the hallway, hair still damp from a shower, wearing a dark sweater and jeans that looked too casual for a prince.
His eyes were shadowed, tired, but steady.
He didn’t smile.
He didn’t speak.
He just looked at me like I was the only thing in the world that mattered.
I stepped aside.
“Come in,” I said.
He stepped over the threshold.
The door closed behind him with a soft click that felt final.
We stood there in the foyer, inches apart, breathing the same air for the first time in five years.
I could smell bergamot and rain and the faint trace of the cologne he’d worn that summer in Positano.
My heart remembered before my mind could stop it.
I turned away first.
“Coffee’s on the counter,” I said. “We have a lot to talk about.”
He followed me into the kitchen without a word.
The war hadn’t started yet.
But it was coming.
And this time, neither of us was running.
