Chapter 159 - Nova

Chapter 159 - Nova
Sitting in that courtroom felt like being trapped inside a storm without shelter. Everything blurred—the polished wood, the hum of whispered voices, the cold gleam of the microphones, even the hollow echo of my own heartbeat. It was one of those moments where time lost its edges, stretching and folding in on itself, until I couldn’t tell if minutes or hours had passed.
What I do remember—what burned itself into me—was Santiago. He sat there, his expression a careful mask, trying to hold his ground while his father’s lawyers tore into him piece by piece. They were good. Too good. Their questions were blades wrapped in silk, slicing through his composure, forcing him into corners before he even realized he’d been trapped.
They painted him as fragile, dependent, a man forever standing in the shadow of his father’s empire. A boy who wanted power but couldn’t bear the weight of it. They twisted everything—his temper, his loyalty, his desires—until even his strength looked like weakness. And the worst part was how methodical it all felt. Every word was chosen to strip him down. Every insinuation dragged him closer to ruin.
I watched Olivia fight back, her voice sharp and steady, but there was a subtle desperation under the surface. She was brilliant—relentless, even—but she wasn’t a manipulator. She argued the facts, but they played with perception. They didn’t need to be right; they just needed to plant doubt. And doubt, once it bloomed, could never truly be erased.
I found myself twisting my hands in my lap until my knuckles went white. It was the only thing I could do to stop myself from standing up, from shouting at the injustice of it all. Watching it unfold felt like being forced to sit through a tragedy where you already knew the ending. It was unbearable.
When court finally adjourned for the day, the silence that followed was worse than the chaos. Everyone walked out with tight shoulders and cold expressions, carrying their private frustrations like ghosts clinging to their backs. The tension followed us home. It pressed against the walls, seeped into the air, made even the smallest conversations feel dangerous.
So when I saw Salvatore Valenti step through the doorway, I wasn’t surprised. Somehow, I had been expecting him. He moved like someone who owned every space he entered—calm, deliberate, the weight of authority in every step. His team had appeared before, brief and inscrutable, but this was different. The air shifted when he arrived. It always did.
“Alessia,” he said, his voice steady and low, each syllable carved with precision. “My daughter. Follow me.”
It wasn’t a request.
I rose without hesitation. The others faded into the background as I followed him down the corridor. His presence filled every inch of the space, his silence louder than any spoken word. When we reached the office, he didn’t pause before claiming Sean’s chair as if it had always belonged to him. He gestured to the one across from him, and I obeyed, sitting quietly, my pulse drumming in my ears.
“I want to talk to you about your life after all this is done,” he said, settling back, folding his hands together in a gesture that looked almost casual.
The ease in his tone unsettled me. He spoke of the lawsuit as though it were nothing more than a passing storm—an inconvenience, not a reckoning. There was certainty in his words, a dangerous kind of faith that didn’t need evidence to exist.
I must have looked doubtful, because his mouth curved into a quiet laugh. “Please,” he said, amusement curling through his voice, “have some faith.”
I didn’t know whether to feel reassured or manipulated. With him, it was always both.
Then, as if the thought had only just occurred to him, he added, “Ah, that reminds me. Tomorrow evening, there’s a charity ball. You’ll come with me.”
It wasn’t an invitation. It was a command delivered with the softness of habit.
He leaned forward, elbows on the desk, his eyes sharpening. “I need you there. You—and maybe Santiago.”
I frowned, caught off guard by the shift in topic, but before I could ask why, he continued. “Look,” he said, his tone dropping to something almost intimate, almost sincere. “I would like you to take over my empire one day. It’s your bloodline, your legacy. But it’s your choice, Alessia. For now.”
The pause that followed was deliberate, calculated—a reminder that in his world, choices always came with limits.
My mind stumbled over the word empire. I had barely come to terms with him being my father, and now he was speaking as if I were meant to inherit the kingdom of a man I still didn’t fully understand.
My throat felt dry, but I managed to speak. “What about the club?”
He tilted his head slightly, studying me with an expression that could have been amusement—or warning.
“What’s happening to it now?” I pressed, needing something solid to hold onto.
His reply was as maddening as it was expected. “What do you want to happen to it?”
I groaned quietly, frustration slipping through before I could stop it. I hated the way he did that—answering questions with more questions, forcing me to reveal myself instead of giving me clarity.
“I want to run it,” I blurted out before I could think better of it. The words spilled out raw, unpolished, but once they were out, they felt right.
He didn’t react immediately, so I kept going, my voice steadier now, my conviction growing with each word. “If it comes free from Pedro’s control… I want to rebuild it. Not just for the business, but for the people. For those who crave something beyond the ordinary. But it has to be consensual, safe. And the training facility—it should be a refuge. For the ones who’ve lost themselves.”
The room fell quiet for a long moment. Then Salvatore nodded, almost approvingly. “Then you will run it,” he said simply, as though the decision required no further discussion. “Someone from my organization will help you manage the logistics.”
It should have sounded like a gift, a vote of confidence—but it carried the weight of a test. He was giving me a kingdom, but the crown came with invisible strings.
“I hope,” he said, a faint smile curling his lips, “that you’ll come to see things my way. That you’ll take over everything, in time. You and Santiago.”
He hesitated, almost as if he were thinking aloud. “Or Sean,” he added, voice quieter, distracted. His eyes drifted toward the window, already elsewhere, already planning.
And then, as abruptly as he had begun, he stood. “Good. We’ll make this happen. You’ll be ready.”
He moved toward the door, his presence already withdrawing, leaving behind that subtle emptiness he always carried with him—the kind that lingered after power left a room.
“Remember,” he said over his shoulder, “I need you at the charity gala tomorrow.”
He was almost out the door when he added, “The stylist will arrive early in the afternoon.”
The door closed before I could even ask.
I sat there in the silence that followed, staring at the space where he’d been, his scent—expensive cologne, smoke, and inevitability—still hanging in the air.
Stylist.
For who?