He exhales. “I know. But it’s more than I hoped for when this all started.”
Several hours later, I find myself in the uncomfortable position of mediating between two people who are barely holding themselves together.
The meeting takes place in Matteo’s study, the same room where so many family decisions have been made.
Matteo sits behind his desk, but he looks diminished somehow—like the fight has gone out of him.
His usually immaculate appearance is slightly disheveled, his shirt wrinkled, his tie askew.
There are shadows under his eyes that suggest he hasn’t been sleeping any better than Bianca.
When Bianca enters, she stops just inside the doorway, her hands clasped tightly in front of her.
She’s wearing jeans and a sweatshirt and minimal makeup, looking younger and more vulnerable than I’ve seen her in days.
“Hi,” she says quietly, the single word carrying the weight of everything unsaid between them.
“Hi, sweetheart,” Matteo replies, his voice rough with emotion. The endearment slips out before he can stop it, and I see Bianca flinch slightly.
“I—” She starts to speak then stops, pressing her lips together as if trying to hold back words that want to tumble out. “I need to apologize.”
Matteo leans forward in his chair, his hands gripping the edge of the desk. The love and yearning in his eyes is so palpable I have to look away. “Bianca, you don’t?—”
“Yes, I do.” Her voice grows stronger, more determined. “I said horrible things to you. Things I didn’t mean. I compared you to Mario, and that was…” She takes a shaky breath, twisting the bottom of her sweater. “That was unforgivable.”
I watch Matteo’s face crumble slightly, the careful control he’s been maintaining starting to crack.
“I was so angry,” Bianca continues, her voice breaking. “I felt like everything I thought I knew about myself was a lie, and I wanted to hurt you the way I was hurting. But that doesn’t excuse what I said.”
“You were in shock,” Matteo says gently, rising from his chair and moving around the desk.
His hands twitch as if he wants to reach out to comfort his daughter but is resisting. “You’d just learned something devastating about your identity. Of course you lashed out.”
“At you, maybe. But not at Bella. Not at the twins.” Tears start streaming down her face and it takes everything in me to not jump up and comfort her. “They didn’t do anything wrong, and Iwas so cruel to them. Arianna just wanted to play with me, and I treated her like a stranger.”
Matteo stops a few feet away from her, his own eyes bright with unshed tears. “They understand, Bianca. They’re confused, but they understand that you were hurting.”
“No, they don’t understand,” she says fiercely, wiping at her blotchy red cheeks. “They’re babies. All they know is that the person they consider their sister suddenly—suddenly didn’t want them anymore.” She chokes on a sob. “And that’s on me.”
Matteo fights the urge to reach for her, and Bianca battles between her need for comfort and her lingering anger.
Neither of them knows how to bridge the gap that’s opened between them.
And that’s where I come in.
“Sit down,” I suggest quietly. “Both of you.”
They comply almost automatically, Bianca taking the chair across from Matteo’s desk while he settles back into his own seat.
The formal positioning feels safer somehow, less intimate than standing close together.
“Bianca came here because she’s been carrying guilt about that dinner,” I explain to Matteo who watches me with rapt attention. “But she’s also still processing the revelation about her parentage. You both need to acknowledge that this conversation isn’t going to fix everything.”
Matteo nods, moving his gaze back to Bianca’s face. “I never wanted to hurt you,” he says quietly. “Everything I did, every choice I made, was because I was trying to protect you.”
“I know,” Bianca replies, her voice barely above a whisper as she sniffles. “But that doesn’t change the fact that my entire identity was built on a lie.”
“Nota lie,” Matteo says urgently, leaning forward. “A…an incomplete truth. Everything else was real, Bianca. Every moment of love, every lesson I taught you, every time I held you when you had nightmares—that was allreal.”
