Chapter 13 - The Last Dinner
Luca returned to the villa nearly nine months after the night he ordered me out.
This time, he came alone.
No folders.
No attorney.
No Chloe.
He stopped inside the doorway.
“It feels different.”
“It isn’t.”
“You are.”
“Yes.”
We ate dinner at the same black marble table.
Neither of us drank wine.
Luca apologized.
Not elegantly.
Not perfectly.
But specifically.
For the affair.
For diminishing my work.
For lying about the company.
For allowing pride to become secrecy.
For bringing Chloe into my home.
And finally, for the words that had started everything.
“Twenty minutes.”
I listened.
Then I said, “I forgive you.”
His eyes lifted.
“But I’m still divorcing you.”
Pain crossed his face.
“I know.”
Forgiveness wasn’t reconciliation.
That was something I had needed months to understand.
Sometimes a happy ending is not restoring what existed.
Sometimes it is being able to remember it without wanting it back.
Before Luca left, he placed his villa key on the table.
“I should have done this the first night.”
“Yes.”
At the door, he turned.
“You were always better at building things than I was.”
“No.”
He looked surprised.
“You built things too, Luca.”
“Then what happened?”
“You started believing building something meant owning everyone who helped you build it.”
He nodded.
Then he walked away.
I thought that was the last chapter of our story.
It wasn’t.
May you like
Because the next morning, I received an offer to buy Vance Capital.
For more money than Luca and I had ever imagined.
