We used to play together. I remember her. I remember Valentina, the little girl with dark hair and those bright green eyes, who would always try to one-up me in our games.
Panic tastes like metal in my mouth, and I swallow, the tightness in my throat amplifying with each thud of my heart. “You’re not Fabiana Fontaine?”
“She’s a made-up person. Someone I’ve hidden behind for years.” She places her hand over her heart, sucking in a ragged breath. “I wanted to tell you, Max, but it was so hard for me.” Her voice is catching.
I clench my jaw, my chest buzzing. “It was too hard for you to be honest with me? To tell me the truth after what we’ve grown to mean to one another?”
“You don’t understand. I had to change my identity. My father’s disgrace had clung to me throughout my teenage years. I was forced to leave my school, to move to Villadorata to live with my grandmother, but everyone knew who I was. Everyone knew what he’d done. Becoming Fabiana made me free of that, free to carve out a new life, to forget that my father destroyed my family legacy.”
Her words rumble over me, my mind reeling. This woman I thought I knew, this woman I thought I was falling in love with, isn’t who she said she is.
It’s all been a lie.
A horrible joke.
And I’m the punchline.
“Your necklace. That’s what the V is for. Valentina.”
She looks down, giving a brief nod of her head.
"Romano. Your father was the one who—” Amelia’s voice trails off as the full magnitude hits her. "He ran away after embezzling Crown funds.”
“I remember that,” I say, my eyes riveted to Fabiana.
Fabiana—Valentina—has the good sense to look ashamed. “It might have been a story to you, but to me it was my life, and it changed in a day.” She holds her hands out, palms up. “Max, please see it from my point of view. I was going to come here and do the project and leave, and no one would be the wiser. I never intended to fall in love with you, and when I realized I was falling for you, I was terrified that you would see me the way everyone else did, as if I was tainted by my father’s crimes.”
My breath comes short and fast, but there's one word that I cling to, even though it's hopeless.
Love.
“You love me?” I ask, my voice shaking.
She looks up at me, her eyes filled with tears. “Yes,” she whispers, her breath caught in her throat.
“How do I know you're not lying now?”
“Because I've got everything to lose if I do.”
"You can destroy me with what you’ve learned about me. Was that your plan all along? Is this all just revenge for what happened to your father?"
Aghast, she exclaims, “No! I came here in good faith to do a job. I might not be the royal family’s biggest fanbecause of what happened, but I agreed to represent you as I saw you, and that’s what I’ve been doing.”
“It’s all falling into place,” Amelia says. “The way you always seem to know what's going on in our lives. You had the inside track. You've spent time here. You probably have a cast of spies everywhere.”
“Is that true?” I ask.
“I did come here before it all happened.”
I blink at her in total astonishment. “So, when I showed you around the palace that time, you could have been my tour guide?” I spit.
“I couldn't let on that I’d been here before. What would a journalist have been doing here as a child?” she replies.
I throw my hands in the air. “More lies.”
“I didn’t want you to find out like this.” Fabiana reaches for me, touching her hand to my forearm.
Instantly, I tense. “Why did you do it?” I ask, forcing steadiness in my voice, my gaze boring into hers, searching for the answers I need so desperately to hear.
