He headed for the stairs, Grace’s cries growing more insistent, and tried to remember the last time he’d felt this way. This certain about anything. The firm had never made him certain—only anxious, always chasing the next promotion, the next deal, the next proof that he was worth something.
Maybe worth wasn’t something you chased. Maybe it was something you built, day by day, in the small moments that added up to a life.
Grace was red-faced and furious when he reached her room, tiny fists waving in the air like she was fighting invisible enemies. He lifted her carefully, still amazed by how light she was, how completely she trusted him to hold her.
“Hey,” he murmured against her downy head. “Hey, it’s okay. I’m here.”
She quieted at the sound of his voice, her cries fading to hiccups and then to silence. Her eyes—already turning hazel, like his—fixed on his face with that unnerving newborn intensity.
“Your dad’s going to be a professor,” he told her. “How about that? Not exactly what we planned, but plans change. That’s something you’ll learn.”
He carried her to the window, showing her the view of the lake, the mountains, the world waiting outside. “This is home now. This is where you’re going to grow up. And I’m going to be here for all of it. I promise.”
From downstairs, he heard Emily call something about needing to leave in an hour. There was honey to deliver and a thousand other small tasks that made up a life in a place where people knew your name.
He had work to do.
CHAPTER 6
SOPHIA
The espresso had gone cold an hour ago.
Sophia Castellano stared at her laptop screen, the glow harsh against the soft afternoon light filtering through the floor-to-ceiling windows of her Milan office. Outside, the city hummed with the energy of summer—tourists crowding the Duomo, locals navigating the streets on Vespas, fashion houses preparing for next season. Inside, the air hung heavy with mounting disaster.
She scrolled through the photos again. Marco at a yacht party in Monaco. Her brother stumbling out of a nightclub in the early hours. Marco with his arm around yet another model whose name no one would remember by next week. The images had hit social media three hours ago and were already trending.
Her phone buzzed. Pierpaolo from Brioni—again.
Sophia let it ring. She’d already fielded six calls this morning, each one more pointed than the last. The collaborative campaign between Castellano Fashion and Brioni had been her project, her vision. A sleek winter collection featuring Marco and the American ex-baseball player, Colton Matthews, bridging European elegance with American appeal. The contracts weren’t signed yet. They’d been close—so close—and now her brother was splashed across every gossip site looking like exactly the kind of liability a heritage brand wanted nothing to do with.
She picked up her espresso, grimaced at the bitter, tepid liquid, and drank it anyway. The porcelain cup clinked when she set it back on the saucer.
Her office phone rang—the landline that only family and senior executives had the number to. She didn’t need to check the display.
“Father.”
“Have you seen?” Alessandro Castellano’s voice carried that particular tone he reserved for Marco’s more spectacular failures. Equal parts disgust and resignation.
“I’m handling it.”
“You’re always handling it. When will your brother start handling anything?”
Sophia pressed her fingers against her temple. The dull ache that had started at breakfast was sharpening into something more insistent. “The Brioni team is nervous. I’ll speak with Marco.”
“Speak with him.” Her father laughed, a short, humorless sound. “Sophia, your brother doesn’t need speeches. He needs consequences.”
“And what consequences would you suggest? Cut him off? He’s the face of half our campaigns.”
“Which is precisely the problem.” Alessandro’s chair creaked through the phone—he was in his study, probably staring at the same photos she’d been torturing herself with. “I built this company on discipline. On legacy. On the Castellano name meaning something beyond—” He paused, and she could picture him gesturing at his own computer screen. “Beyond this.”
“I know.”
“Do you? Because I am beginning to wonder if anyone in this family understands what is at stake.”
The perfume she’d applied that morning—her signature scent, the one the house had created for her after her divorce—suddenly felt too strong. She stood and crossed to the window, needing air even though the glass didn’t open.
“The campaign will survive,” she said. “I’ll make certain of it.”
