MATTEO POV'S
The line goes dead.
Her voice still echoes in my skull like a gunshot in an empty cathedral.
I sit there on the edge of the hotel bed, phone still pressed to my ear even though there's nothing left to hear. The room is too quiet. Too clean. Too everything I've hated for five years.
I drop the phone. It bounces once on the duvet.
Then I stand up and walk to the window.
New York glitters below like a promise I broke.
Five years.
Five years of mornings that started with the same ritual: open the secret phone, check her Instagram, close it before the ache settled in my chest.
I told myself it was penance.
I told myself it was protection.
I was lying to both of us.
It started the night I left Positano.
I'd kissed her goodbye at three in the morning, her hair still smelling of salt and sex, and promised I'd be back by lunch.
I meant it.
I swear I meant it.
The driver took me straight to the private airstrip.
My mother was already on the tarmac when I landed in Rome.
She didn't hug me.
She handed me a folder.
Inside were photos.
Valentina walking alone in New York.
Valentina laughing at a café with friends.
Valentina crying on a bench in Central Park three months pregnant, hand curved over a belly she thought no one knew about.
My mother watched my face the way surgeons watch incisions.
"She's pregnant," she said.
"And she's American. Common. Disposable."
I tried to argue.
I tried to shout.
I tried to tell her I loved her.
She laughed once, soft and cold.
"Love is a luxury the crown cannot afford, Matteo.
You will end it.
Or I will end her."
She slid another photo across the table.
This one showed a red laser dot dancing across Valentina's back while she walked home from the subway.
"Next time it won't be a warning."
I signed the breakup text in the palace bathroom, hands shaking so hard the screen smeared.
We were a mistake. Don't contact me again.
Then I turned off the phone and threw up until there was nothing left.
After that, I became the perfect son.
I attended galas with Isabella on my arm.
I smiled for the cameras.
I let my mother believe she'd won.
Every night I opened the second phone.
The one I kept in the safe behind the false panel in my study.
The one with only one contact.
I watched her build Luxe Bloom from nothing.
First post: a single candle burning on a windowsill. Caption: Started with $800 and a dream. Let's see how far we get.
I wired the first anonymous transfer that night.
Then another.
Then another.
Shell companies.
Blind trusts.
Layers so deep even my mother's people couldn't trace them.
I told myself it was the least I could do.
I told myself it wasn't love if it came with strings.
I lied.
Every time I saw a new photo of Luca, something inside me cracked a little more.
First steps.
First birthday.
First day of preschool.
He had my eyes.
And her smile.
I got drunk the night she posted him wearing a paper crown.
I almost booked a flight.
My mother's security team intercepted the booking.
They showed me a new photo: Valentina pushing Luca on a swing.
A red dot on his tiny back.
I cancelled the flight.
I stayed away.
Until three weeks ago.
The parliament vote changed everything.
New succession law.
Male bloodline only.
No named heir.
The archivist found the old clinic records from Positano.
My name.
Her name.
The council voted 11–2 to bring the child in.
My mother lost control for the first time in fifty years.
And I finally had a reason to fight back.
I flew commercial.
No security.
No title.
Just a man with a five-year-old letter in his pocket and a son he'd never held.
Now I'm standing in a hotel room in New York, staring at the city I left her in, and I can still feel the weight of her voice on the phone.
I pick up the phone again.
Dial the number I've memorized.
It rings.
She doesn't answer.
I don't leave a message.
Instead I open my laptop and start drafting the statement I'll release tomorrow.
The one that says I'm claiming my son.
My family.
My future.
And if the world wants to burn me for it,
let them try.
I'm already ashes.