The Aftermath

Luca’s POV

Romano’s office was the room in the Virelli estate that had always felt most specifically like him — large, ordered, the furniture dark and solid and chosen for function over aesthetics. The desk that had been his father’s before it was his. The bookshelves that held things he had actually consulted. The particular smell of old paper and wood polish and something underneath that Luca had associated with his father’s authority since he was old enough to understand what authority was.

He closed the door behind him.

Romano was standing at the window with his back to the room.

Elena sat in the chair beside the desk with her hands folded in her lap and her eyes on her husband’s back.

Luca stood.

Nobody spoke for a moment that lasted longer than moments usually lasted.

Then Romano turned.

He looked at his son with the dark eyes that Luca had inherited and that looked different on the face of a man twenty six years older — carrying more, showing less, the specific quality of eyes that had seen too much of a specific kind of thing for too long.

“Explain,” he said.

“I married her,” Luca said. “This morning. A courthouse. A priest. Victor witnessed it. It’s legal and it’s done.”

“I know what you did,” Romano said. “I’m asking you to explain why.”

Luca held his father’s gaze.

“Because she’s mine,” he said.

Romano was quiet.

“She is not—” Elena started.

“She’s not blood,” Luca said. “She never was. We both know that.”

“She is your sister in every way that—”

“She’s not my sister.” He said it without heat. Simply. The way you stated coordinates. “She has never been my sister. We gave her a name and a home and a family and I am grateful for all of it. But she is not my sister and I am not her brother and what I did this morning is legal and binding and I am not going to apologize for it.”

The room held the specific quality of silence that followed statements that couldn’t be taken back.

Romano looked at him.

“The Marchettis,” he said finally. “Santino shook my hand.”

“I know.”

“At my table. In front of witnesses.”

“I know.”

“Luca.” Romano’s voice dropped to the register it went to when things were serious — which was quieter, not louder, always quieter. “You have broken an arrangement between two families that was meant to end years of conflict. Do you understand what Santino is going to do with that?”

“He’s going to prepare for war,” Luca said.

“Yes.”

“Let him.”

Romano looked at him for a long moment.

“You just started a war,” he said quietly. “In your home. Over a girl.”

“Over my wife,” Luca said.

The distinction landed in the room.

Romano turned back to the window.

Luca waited.

Elena was looking at her hands.

“How long?” Romano said. To the window. Not turning.

Luca frowned. “How long what?”

“How long have you—” Romano paused. “How long has this been happening?”

Luca thought about the wrong room and a word that stopped everything and then didn’t stop anything at all. He thought about her Diary nearly tucked under her bag like something forgotten but not quite.

“Long enough,” he said.

Romano was quiet for a very long time.

When he turned back his expression had changed. Not softened — Romano Virelli did not soften, it was not in his construction — but shifted. Something had moved behind the eyes. Something that Luca couldn’t immediately read and filed away to examine later.

“The Conti family,” Romano said.

Luca nodded. He had already been thinking about this.

“If Santino moves we need Ezio Conti before he does,” Luca said. “I’ll arrange a meeting.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

Romano looked at him.

“And Sofia?” he said.

“Sofia is my wife,” Luca said. “That is not a negotiation.”

A pause.

“No,” Romano said quietly. “I don’t suppose it is.”

He sat down behind his desk.

He picked up his pen.

He looked at it for a moment.

“Go,” he said. Not unkindly. “Deal with your house.”

Luca turned to go.

“Luca.”

He stopped.

Romano was still looking at the pen.

“I saw the way you looked at her,” he said quietly. “The day after she came home.”

Luca said nothing.

“I didn’t say anything,” Romano continued. “Because I told myself I was wrong.” A pause. “I was not wrong.”

He set the pen down.

“Go,” he said again.

Luca went.

He found Sofia in the corridor outside the sitting room.

She was standing with her back against the wall and her hands loosely at her sides and her eyes on the middle distance with the expression of someone working through something internally at significant speed.

She looked up when she heard him.

He stopped in front of her.

“Valentina?” he said.

“Not yet,” she said. “She went upstairs.”

He nodded.

“My father?”

“Managed,” he said.

She absorbed this.

“The Marchettis are going to—”

“I know.”

“Luca—”

“Sofia.” He looked at her. “I told you when this started. I know what it means. I know what it costs.”

She held his gaze.

“You should have seen mother’s face,” she said quietly.

“I know.”

“And Matteo—”

“I know.” He paused. “Do you regret it?”

The question arrived before he had entirely decided to ask it. He watched it land on her — the slight widening of her eyes, the breath she took.

She looked at him for a long moment.

“No,” she said.

He held that.

“My penthouse,” he said. “We can go tonight. Give the house time to—”

“No.” Immediate. Certain.

He raised an eyebrow.

“I’m not running,” she said. “This is my family. They are angry and they have a right to be angry and I am going to stay and I am going to give them time and I am going to win them back.” She paused. “Every single one of them.”

He looked at her.

With her chin raised and her eyes steady and the particular quality of someone who had made a decision that had cost them something and was carrying it with both hands.

Every single one of them.

He believed her.

Completely and without reservation.

He reached out.

He straightened the collar of her dress — barely, just the edge of it, just the specific excuse of a gesture from a man who needed to touch something and had limited vocabulary for need.

“Go to bed,” he said quietly. “Tomorrow is going to be difficult.”

She looked up at him.

“Is any of this going to be easy?” she asked.

The corner of his mouth moved.

“No,” he said.

She almost smiled.

“Goodnight, Luca,” she said.

She pushed off the wall and walked toward the staircase.

He watched her go.

He thought about his father’s voice.

“I saw the way you looked at her. The day after she came home.”

“I was not wrong.”

No, Luca thought.

He was not.