“Don Falcieri, your apology is three months too late, and a lifetime short of mattering.”
I took a document from my clutch and held it out to him.
“What’s this?”
“Divorce papers,” I said calmly. “Sign them.”
Caius took the papers, his hands shaking.
“No… Alessia, please, give me another chance…”
“A chance?” I scoffed. “How many chances did you have to believe me? How many times did you choose her instead?”
“I can make it up to you,” he pleaded, desperation cracking his voice. “I’ll give you anything. Money, power… name it, it’s yours.”
“I don’t you to give me anything,” I said, turning to leave. “I can get it all for myself.”
“Alessia!” Caius suddenly grabbed my wrist. “Please don’t go. I love you. You’re the only
I looked down at the hand gripping my arm.
The same hand that had once gently placed a wedding ring on
my!
one I’ve ever loved!”
Now, its touch made my skin crawl.
“Let go.”
“No, I’m never letting you go again,” his eyes were wild with desperation. “I already lost you once, I can’t…”
I wrenched my arm from his grasp.
“You never truly had me,” I said, my voice quiet. “So there was nothing to lose.”
The words pierced his heart like a shard of glass.
Caius’s hand fell to his side, as if all the strength had gone out of him.
“Sign the papers, Don Falcieri,” I said, giving him one last look. “So we can both move on.”
With that, I walked out of the auction house without looking back.
Behind me, a raw, broken sound escaped Caius’s lips. I didn’t turn back.
Three days later, Caius returned to New York.
The moment he stepped out of the airport, he saw a swarm of reporters in front of the Falcieri Tower.
Livia was standing on the steps, holding a baby and sobbing for the cameras.
“I just want what’s rightfully his! This is Caius’s son! He can’t deny his own flesh and blood!”
The Madre stood beside her, dabbing at dry eyes.
“My son is abandoning his own flesh and blood for a ghost! This is not the Falcieri way!”
The reporters were in a frenzy, flashes popping everywhere.
“Don Falcieri, do you have a response?”
“Are you really abandoning your son?”
Caius stood in the crowd, watching the carefully staged melodrama.
A new kind of coldness bloomed in his
A final, destructive frost.
eyes.
“I made a mistake once, I won’t make it again,” he murmured, his voice so low only he could hear it.
“I said it before. There is only one Donna of the Falcieri family.”
