When I finally ended it, he just... nodded. Accepted it without a single argument.
Thatwas what broke me. Not his passiveness in restaurants or his inability to pick a movie. It was watching him fold the moment I pushed back, watching him crumble like wet paper because confrontation made him uncomfortable.
I need someone who canhandleme.
My brothers don't understand this. They see their baby sister and think I need someone gentle, someone who'll worship the ground I walk on and never raise his voice.
They're wrong.
I need someone who won't flinch when I snap. Someone who'll snap right back. Someone with enough spine to stand next to a Sartori woman without wilting.
After Marco, I stopped trying to findsomeone. Started just looking forsomething.
Two men. Both strangers. Both one-night stands in hotels far from Chicago where Sartori meant nothing.
Neither of them knew my name. Neither of them cared who I was.
And somehow, that made it emptier.
I sit up in bed, pushing my hair back. The digital clock reads 2:47 AM.
This is pathetic.
I've spent years avoiding intimacy because every man who learns I'm Vittoria Sartori either runs or tries to use me. The runners are the smart ones.
The users are worse. They see dollar signs and power and connections. They see a shortcut to the top of Chicago's underworld. They don't seeme.
Two years of nothing. Two years of watching my brothers find love while I built walls higher and higher around myself.
And now Mamma wants to tear them down with a stranger's ring.
The thing about being the family tech nerd is that nobody expects you to have a sex drive.
For years, my brothers assumed I was too busy with code to care about men. Too wrapped up in firewalls and encryption protocols to notice the opposite sex existed. Vittoria's in her room again, probably hacking something. Vittoria doesn't date, she dates her laptop.
And honestly? I let them believe it.
Easier that way. No Lorenzo giving me gentle advice about finding "the right one." No Pietro threatening to murder anyone who touched me.
Blissful ignorance on their part. Complete freedom on mine.
Because here's what my family doesn't know: I figured out what my body needed a long time ago.
The internet is a wonderful thing when you're a curious twenty-year-old with zero privacy and five overprotective brothers. I learned to clear my browser history before I learned to drive. Watched videos that made my cheeks burn and my thighs press together. Discovered exactly what kind of touch made me gasp, what rhythm worked, what fantasies played behind my closed eyes when I finally let go.
My hand slides under my pillow, fingers brushing the silk storage bag hidden there.
My little secret.
I bought it a year after Riccardo died. Ordered it to a PO box three towns over, paid cash, smuggled it into the compound like contraband. Which, in this house, it basically was.
That first night I used it, I cried afterward. Not from shame. From relief.
Finally,finally, something that felt good. Something that was mine. Something that didn't require explanations or emotional availability or the risk of someone learning my last name and running for the hills.
For two years, this has been my only indulgence. My secret rebellion against the grief that swallowed everything else.
I roll onto my back, staring at those faded stars again. My body hums with restless energy, the kind that comes from too many emotions and not enough sleep.
