Chapter 41
“Nothing. You were so… composed, like I meant nothing to you anymore.”
“I probably sound like a nut job right now.”
“More or less,” Amber murmured, a sardonic smile curving her lips despite the rawness in her eyes. “If you wanted me back, why didn’t you just call me?” Her voice trembled with frustration. She clenched her fists, every part of her fighting the urge to reach across the space between them and slap him until his teeth rattled, just to jolt him into understanding how deeply he’d hurt her.
Luca didn’t respond immediately. He looked away, his shoulders heavy with a weariness she hadn’t seen before. Slowly, he met her gaze, his expression softened by something close to regret. “I knew you,” he started, his voice barely above a whisper. “I knew the kind of woman you were. Strong, stubborn, fiercely independent. You once told me about your mother…” He stopped, hesitating as though he was intruding on an old, sensitive wound.
Amber felt a twinge in her chest as he brought up a memory she’d buried long ago, something she had shared with him one night, back when they would talk through the night in his penthouse, unraveling each other’s secrets like fragile threads in the dark. She remembered telling him about her mother, how she’d grown up desperately seeking affection that was never returned. Her mother had been distant, absent in all the ways that mattered. No warmth, no pride, just indifference.
“You told me how, no matter how much she neglected you, you loved her,” Luca continued. “You tried for years to win her affection, hoping that one day she’d look at you with the same pride other mothers showed their daughters. You told me that you spent years believing that someday, somehow, she’d change.” His eyes softened, his gaze distant, as though he were seeing Amber’s pain through the eyes of her sixteen-year-old self.
Amber swallowed, memories flooding back. And the there was this one occasion – a recital, where she was going to play piano. She’d stood on that stage, scanning the audience, heart pounding, until she’d finally understood her mother wasn’t coming. She’d felt… nothing. No anger, no sadness. Just emptiness. It was the moment she had realized she had nothing left to give.
“You told me that day, Amber,” he murmured, “that when she didn’t show up for you, you stopped feeling anything for her. That was the day you walked away from her for good.” Luca’s voice was thick, his words hanging between them, heavy with memory. He took a shaky breath and looked at her, his face a blend of sadness and shame. “I never forgot that story. It haunted me, thinking that one day… one day you’d look at me that way.”
Amber felt her chest tighten, a mixture of anger and disbelief rising within her. “You remember that, but you didn’t understand that I was already feeling abandoned?” Her words sliced through the silence, a flash of hurt illuminating her face. “You knew that, and still…”
He ran a hand through his hair, struggling to find the right words. “I… I knew I didn’t treat you the way you deserved,” he admitted, his voice almost breaking. “You were painted as a scarlet woman across the media. My family badmouthed you, disrespected you every chance they got… and I did nothing to defend you.” His jaw tightened, his hand curling into a fist as he continued. “You cried out for help, and I just watched, convincing myself that having me, having my love, would be enough for you.”
Luca’s shoulders slumped as he held her gaze, his own filled with a raw, unguarded honesty that Amber hadn’t seen in a long time. “I thought, I really thought, you’d forgive me, that you’d see my inaction as a small price to pay for my love. My family… they made you feel like you didn’t belong, and I let them. I was trying to make it up to them—to people who thought they’d lost me. And I thought…” he shook his head in dismay, “I thought that as long as you had me, that would be enough.”
Luca looked down, his face etched with remorse. “When you left, I realized it was because you didn’t love me anymore,” he said softly. “I thought that was the only way you could walk away. That you’d stopped feeling anything for me, just like you did for your mother. “
Luca’s gaze fixed on Amber, studying her as though bracing himself for the storm. Her mouth was pressed into a tight line, teeth clenched in barely contained anger. She was holding back, every part of her taut and simmering, a volcano on the brink. He knew it, and he knew he deserved it. For once, he wasn’t going to look away.
“Say it,” he murmured quietly, almost as if daring her. “Just say it.”
A flash of anger crossed her face, and she bit down harder, her fists clenched. “You conceited, arrogant bastard!” she finally burst out, her voice cutting through the heavy silence of the room like a blade. Her words were raw, each syllable saturated with the pain of years, a deep wound finally given words.
He didn’t reply.
“Oh! You still don’t know the half of it!” He looked away again, his face a painful pink in the dim night light.
Luca’s voice trembled as he spoke, the weight of years of regret pressing down on each word. “You didn’t react,” he murmured, looking into Amber’s eyes as if searching for something that had been lost long ago. “Not a message, not a call. Just… silence. And then, there was that cold letter from your lawyer, setting the divorce proceedings in motion. I tried to read between the lines, hoping for a sign that you didn’t want this either, that you might still care. But there was nothing.”
His laugh was hollow, a pained sound that escaped as if he’d held it in for years. “That silence—every day, it made my belief stronger that you wanted nothing more to do with me. It built up, reinforced my fears, twisted everything in my head. I… I didn’t know what to do. Didn’t know how to make things right.” His gaze dropped to his hands, clenched tightly on his lap. “I thought about coming to you, begging for a second chance. So many times, I imagined it.”
He paused, swallowing hard, his gaze dropping. "But the thought of facing you—seeing those empty eyes looking back at me, finding nothing there for me anymore… it terrified me. The thought of looking at you, my redhead lover, and seeing not a trace of love left in those beautiful eyes… I think that would’ve broken me completely.”
He took a shaky breath, voice barely above a whisper. “I didn’t think I could survive that.”
“So, I let the divorce go through.” Luca’s voice cracked, rough and raw as if the words themselves had to be forced from some locked-up part of him. “With that one decision, it felt like my whole life slipped away. My family. My son. My wife. All of it… gone.” He let out a breath, the sound empty and brittle, and Amber could see the shadows of that pain settling over him like it had never left.
He looked past her, eyes vacant as he spoke, almost as if he were back in that terrible time, reliving each decision he hadn’t known how to undo. “After that, everything felt… hollow. I tried to go on, but there was this darkness, this ache in me. It followed me everywhere.” He paused, and Amber noticed how his hands tightened into fists. “And then there was Carlotta. She was there, always steady, always gentle. She wasn’t angry with me, didn’t throw things or call me every name in the book.”He laughed, a sad, thin sound. “She didn’t make me feel like a complete bastard just by being around her.”
“unlike me?” Amber chuckled bitterly.
And Luca nodded. “unlike you.”
He shrugged, shoulders sagging as if under a great weight. “But she didn’t set my heart on fire either. With Carlotta, everything was calm, almost too calm. My heart was too beaten up to handle anything intense, and… maybe I thought that was all I deserved. Maybe I just didn’t want my heart to race anymore, didn’t want to feel anything at all.”
He paused, taking a shaky breath as his eyes returned to hers, haunted. “So I thought, why not? Why not just settle with her? She cared about me, and our families approved. It would’ve; maybe they’d all f made everyone happy.” By then, the divorce had been finalized, and I’d resigned myself to the fact that I’d lost you forever. Trying to recreate any piece of the life I had with you felt impossible, so I told myself Carlotta was good enough.”
“But the truth. The real truth was that the reason, I decided to marry her was – I no longer wanted to be alone! I had a partner, you, for less than 11 months….such a short while and yet it was like a short snippet into an amazing life, coming home to a loving wife, kissing her senseless. Being loved. A child. My child growing inside of her. It was the most amazing dream I ever had…..didn’t even felt like it ever happened after you left…. I thought, no- I wanted to recapture that. I wanted that so-so much.”
He took a breath, his voice thick with emotion. “And despite what you might think of me, I did try to be honest with Carlotta—at least, as honest as I could manage. I told her that I didn’t know if I could offer her the kind of unconditional love she deserved because I was terrified that my heart might never heal. But I promised to build a life with her, to have children, to grow old together. I thought that maybe, in time, something would blossom between us—something that could resemble the love I once felt for you.”
“She accepted?” Amber echoed, her voice tinged with disbelief. The thought of anyone settling for such a hollow existence was unfathomable to her.
“Yes, she did. We got engaged, and the irony is that I would have gone through with the marriage. I would have settled into that half-life, a mere shadow of what I once shared with you. But then you showed up, standing in my doorway with our little Nico in your arms, and all I could think was, ‘This is my wife! My woman!’ I wanted to shout it from the rooftops.”
Luca’s gaze turned distant as he recalled that moment. “It was like a wake-up call, having you living under my roof with our baby boy—the living embodiment of our love. But it was painful, too, because I was thrust back into a dream that felt impossibly out of reach. I was faced with the reality of what I had lost and the life we could have had together.”
He sighed heavily, running a hand through his hair as frustration flickered in his eyes. “You can’t imagine the thoughts that swirled in my head. I’d find myself probing and prodding at Nico, asking if his mummy had any male friends, if there was anyone she brought home regularly. I was losing my mind with the fear.”
“The problem was still the same,” Luca continued, his voice heavy with frustration. “You seemed completely unfazed by the fact that I was engaged to another woman.” He paused, collecting his thoughts as he searched for the right words. “Remember the first week you were living there? Just to test the waters, I mentioned that I had invited Carlotta over for breakfast at the casa.”
Amber nodded slowly, the memory coming back with a rush. She could still picture Luca's face, a strange mix of anger and disappointment when she had accepted the invitation with indifference. It was as if he had wanted her to react, to fight him about this.
“You just shrugged and said, ‘Okay,’ as if it was no big deal that I was bringing my girlfriend into our home. In that moment, it felt like my skin had been flayed with a branding iron.” Luca's voice grew thick with emotion, a bitter edge creeping in.
“WHY?” Amber asked, her brows furrowing in confusion.
“Because I still saw you as my wife,” he replied, his tone softening. “And what kind of wife would let her husband bring his other woman into their house without a second thought?” He studied her closely, noticing the way her lips twisted and her face scrunched up in disbelief.
“You can say it,” he urged, almost challenging her.
Amber took a deep breath, her eyes narrowing slightly. “You’re so damn twisted in the head that it would be easier to untangle a hippie’s dreadlocks,”
“yeah, probably.” He agreed, self embarrassingly.
“Was that why you were giving me those strange, angry looks when I said I wouldn’t be coming with you and Carlotta to take Nico to the zoo?” Amber asked, her voice trembling slightly with the weight of her emotions.
Luca nodded, a deep frown settling across his brow as he recalled the moment.
The silence that followed hung heavy in the air, thick with unspoken words and unresolved feelings. He stared at the floor for a moment, lost in thought before finally breaking the stillness.
“The thunderstorm was really my saving grace, you know,” he began, his voice low and earnest. “When I held you in my arms again, when I kissed you, everything shifted. In that instant, I realized something profound—I didn’t give a damn about anything else. I didn’t care about what you felt or whether you still loved me. All that mattered was having you back in my life, just like that.”
His eyes darkened with emotion as he continued. “It was as if the storm had washed away all the doubts and fears I’d been holding onto. For that fleeting moment, it felt like nothing else existed but you and me. I wanted to forget everything—the hurt, the anger, the confusion—and simply bask in the warmth of you again.” He leaned forward, his expression raw and vulnerable, his voice barely above a whisper. “I needed that connection, that spark we once had. I wanted to forget the world outside, the chaos of our lives, and just be with you.”
“And then it spiraled into my worst nightmare,” Luca confessed, his voice low and strained, as if dredging up the memory caused him physical pain. He turned to Amber, his gaze piercing, filled with a tumultuous intensity that shook her to her very core. In that moment, the world around them seemed to fade away, leaving only the two of them suspended in a charged silence.
“When you finally revealed the real reason you were here, it felt like the earth had crumbled beneath my feet.” His words hung in the air, heavy and unyielding. “Nico is never going to be separated from his mother, not ever! I won’t allow it!” The fervor in his voice echoed through the room, a primal declaration fueled by love and desperation.
“You won’t be leaving him here! I will be right there with you when you leave for your treatment next week,” he continued, his expression resolute, like a man standing guard over everything he held dear.