Page 2 of Valentino

She doesn't believe me. I can see it in the set of her mouth. But Vittoria knows me well enough to know when I need a door, and she gives me one.

"Okay," she says gently. "Call me when you land. I mean it. Even if it's three in the morning here."

"I will."

"I love you. Go be brilliant."

"Love you too, Vee."

The screen goes dark, and the cabin suddenly feels enormous and empty around me. I sit there with my phone in my lap, the dead black rectangle of it, and the hum of the engines fills my ears like white noise.

I tap my thumbnail against the glass and tell myself it doesn't matter. I'm twenty-five years old. I stopped needing my mother to say the right words a long time ago. I learned that lesson at a dinner table when I was fourteen, crying into a plate of food the new nanny made wrong, with no one in the house who knew me well enough to ask what was wrong.

I shake off the thought, refusing to let it ruin this moment for me.

Instead I open the camera. I angle the champagne flute against the window, the clouds blurred soft and golden behind it, the light catching the bubbles just right. I take six pictures, pick the best one, fix the brightness, warm the tones. My thumbs move fast and sure. This, I know how to do..

Wheels up. Milan, here we come. Two years in the making, and I still can't believe it's real. Some dreams take their sweet time. #CasaAurelia #MilanBound

I hit post.

And then I wait, the phone warm in my palm, my heart fluttering in my chest which is stupid because I've done this a million times.

The first like comes in within seconds. Then another. Then a flood of them, hearts stacking up faster than I can read the names, comments blooming one after another. GORGEOUS, so happy for you babe, living the dream, that's MY girl.

I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding.

There. See? Someone's paying attention. Someone always is, as long as I give them something worth looking at.

I scroll through the comments, reading every one, letting the little hits of warmth land where the thumbs-up didn't. The algorithm answers me the way no one in my family ever does. Fast. Loud. Reliable.

I tell myself it's enough.

I finish the flat champagne in one long swallow and signal the attendant for another, while somewhere below me, miles down through the white, my parents are exactly where they always are. Out of reach, and not looking up.

The taxi smells like pine air freshener fighting a losing battle against cigarette smoke, and I'm too jet-lagged to care.

The driver pulls up to the hotel, and it's gorgeous in that hushed European way. All ivy and brass and a doorman who looks like he moisturises more than I do. I tip the driver too much because I'm excited and can't help myself, then drag my suitcase through the revolving doors into the lobby.

And there, leaning against a column, is Elio Mancini.

I stop walking. My suitcase wheel keeps spinning a second too long, ticking against the marble.

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me," I say.

He's wearing dark clothes, like always, nothing that draws the eye, except I'm looking right at him so the strategy's clearly broken. His hands are folded in front of him. Patient.

He pushes off the column. Doesn't smile. He almost never smiles, and I used to make a sport of chasing it, back when chasing things from him felt like a game I could win and walk away from unscathed. "Amanda."

"No. No, we're not doing the Amanda thing." I roll my eyes so hard I nearly strain something. "What the hell are you doing here, Elio?"

"Working."

"Working." I let the word sit there, sour. "In Milan. At my hotel. What a coincidence, since I'm not aware of any modelling agencies hiring tall, broody men to stand in lobbies and ruin a girl's good mood."

A muscle moves in his jaw. Not quite a flinch. He’s used to me by now, which is its own kind of insult.

"The Sartoris sent me."