Chapter 38: Reflection

Alessandro

The moment his name left her lips in that place.Max...I felt the ground beneath my feet crack open. The perfect, fragile world we had built over breakfast, in the shower, tangled in our sheets, instantly threatened by the ghost of that man.

Buongiorno, amore mio. I had whispered it into her skin, believing it. For those few hours, the future was a tangible thing we held between us, soft and bright as dawn. We spoke of nurseries and names, and I watched her face, alight with a hope so fierce it burned away the shadows of our name, our history. Our child. A chance to build something clean, something that was entirely ours, untainted by the old hatreds.

And then she wanted to bring me into her world, to show me the place where she was untouchable, a queen in her own right. The academy. And I, like a fool, agreed. I walked into that space and saw his absence like a signature on every wall. I had orchestrated it, and yet the reality of it—the hushed silence where there should be clatter—felt like a condemnation.

She asked me, her voice already laced with a dawning horror, and I couldn’t tell her the truth. I couldn’t say that yes, I had him suspended. That I had my people investigate him, combing through his life until they found a minor, meaningless infraction,a paperwork discrepancy, a forgotten form and I leveraged it with the full, crushing weight of my name and resources to have him removed. Indefinitely.

I did it because the way he looked at her—not with the deference owed to a Moretti, but with a coach’s pride, a friend’s easy familiarity—made me want to break his hands. He lived in her world, a world of pure, earned skill, and I was just the interloper from a world of shadows and transactions. He was a variable I could not control, a man who commanded a part of her respect that I had not earned. So I removed him.

So I deflected. “Perhaps he broke a rule.”

It was the wrong answer. The worst possible answer. It was the answer of the man she feared I was.

Her eyes, wide and disbelieving, searched mine. “Is this your way of removing a problem? Destroying his career?”

And something ugly and primal twisted in my gut. Problem. Was that all he was to her? A logistical issue? Or was he something more, something that made her voice catch with this specific brand of protective fury? The jealousy, a green-eyed monster I usually kept chained deep within, ripped free.

“Is that what he is to you?” I heard myself ask, the words cold and sharp. “A ‘problem’? Or something more?”

The moment the words left my mouth, I knew I’d lost. I saw it in the way her face shattered, not with anger now, but with a profound, weary disappointment that was a thousand times worse.

“You’re jealous,” she whispered, the sound carrying in the dead air of the gym. “After everything—after last night, after the baby—you’re actually jealous. You’re so afraid of losing control that you’d ruin an innocent man’s life.”

She was right. She had carved me open with a surgeon’s precision and exposed the rotten core. I had turned my own fear—the terror of losing this second chance, this future we had just dreamed into existence—into a weapon. And I had aimed it at the wrong target, destroying a piece of her trust instead.

The athletes were watching, a silent audience to my downfall. I tried to salvage it, to command the situation as I have been taught to command every room. “Let’s discuss this outside.” But she was already walking away, her spine straight, a queen in exile. And I, the king who had set fire to his own castle, could only follow.

The drive back was a special kind of torture. The silence was a physical weight, pressing the air from my lungs. She stared out the window, one hand resting over her stomach. Our child. What was she thinking in that terrible quiet? Was she imagining the life growing inside her? Was she wondering what kind of father I would be? A man who solves his problems with phone calls and ruin? A man who sees a rival in every friend?

At the apartment, the scene of our morning idyll, she didn’t hesitate. She walked past our bedroom—our room, with its rumpled sheets that held the scent of us, of promises and a fragile truce—and straight into the guest room. The click of the lock was a gunshot in the quiet. A final, definitive boundary.

I poured a drink, the amber liquid catching the light, and stood at the vast window, looking down at the city that I, in so many ways, commanded. I had everything my name could buy. Wealth that could last ten generations. Power that made men hesitate before they spoke. A legacy written in blood and gold. And I was losing the only thing that had ever given any of it meaning. I had traded a morning of her laughter for the sound of a locking door.

My phone buzzed on the marble countertop, the vibration unnaturally loud. I glanced at the screen.

Marco: Gala tonight. The car will be there at eight. Don’t be late.

Another performance. Another night of masks and polite conversation, of playing the part of the flawless Alessandro DeSanti, while my world collapsed into quiet, desperate ruin just a few rooms away. I drained the glass, the whiskey burning a path of empty warmth down my throat, a poor substitute for the heat of her. The performance was about to begin, and I had never felt less like playing my part.