Page 40 of The Hidden Heir

“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.