Valentina held my gaze without yielding a millimeter, as if weighing me. Then she exhaled and gave a small nod.
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll get her.”
I watched her walk down the short hallway toward the bedrooms, the tension obvious in every movement. And I couldn’t deny the perverse satisfaction of seeing her unsettled.
She had taken something precious from me.
Now it was in my hands to make her pay for every second of that loss.
A door opened softly.
Then a sleepy child’s voice floated down the hall.
“Morning, Mommy.”
My heartbeat sped up—so hard it almost hurt.
The sound of that voice—my daughter’s voice—made every conflicting emotion crash together inside me, leaving me breathless for a second.
Anger. Anxiety. Uncertainty.
And an unbearable need to see that small, delicate face again—the one burned into my memory since that night.
I turned slowly toward the hallway, tense, waiting—
Until Valentina returned with a little girl in dark hair and intense gray eyes that were exactly like mine.
Clara rubbed her eyes, clutching a small plush unicorn to her chest as she stared at me with immediate, unexpected suspicion.
My chest tightened.
That wasn’t the reaction I’d imagined last night.
“Clara, this is Enrico,” Valentina said carefully, watching her daughter as she spoke. Her tone was artificially calm, trying to soften the strange tension in the room. “He… came to talk to you today.”
Clara didn’t answer. She squeezed her unicorn harder and took a small step back, closer to her mother. Her eyes stayed on me—wary, cautious.
Valentina flicked a look at me, confused and worried by her daughter’s response.
“Mommy…” Clara murmured, voice barely audible as she half-hid her face against Valentina’s leg. “I don’t want to talk to him. He was yelling at you. He’s mean.”
The innocent words hit me like something sharp and deep—ripping through whatever emotional armor I still had left.
It hurt more than I could’ve imagined.
And in that moment, I realized I was unprepared for this.
Guilt slammed into me.
She remembered.
Clara remembered the night she heard my voice raised, heard me shouting at Valentina, and now she looked at me like I was a threat.
My eyes went to Valentina. She looked momentarily shaken too. She inhaled, then crouched to Clara’s height, smoothing her hair gently.
“No, sweetheart,” Valentina said softly, glancing at me again—an unreadable look. “He isn’t mean. Sometimes grown-ups talk in a different way, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to hurt Mommy or you. It’s okay.”
My breath caught as I watched the tenderness in the way she handled it—the way she put her daughter’s emotional safety above any resentment she could’ve had toward me.
