Her eyes twinkle as she presses her index finger against my chest. That heart she doesn’t think I have? It skips a fucking beat. I can’t remember the last time she smiled at me so genuinely, and I don’t recall her ever touching me in this way.
Before I realize what I’m doing, I’ve got my hand wrapped around her wrist and her palm pressed flat against my chest. Valentina’s eyes widen a fraction, but she gives me nothing. She doesn’t look as affected as I am.
“You tell me. Do I?” Does she notice that my heart beats a little faster than it should?
“No,” she says, grinning. “I stand corrected. You’re as heartless as ever.”
The edges of my lips turn up as I loosen my hold on her wrist, letting her hand fall away.
Valentina is smiling as she reaches for my laptop on the coffee table, and I can’t tear my eyes off her. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her smile like that when it’s just the two of us. She’s given those smiles to every single one of my brothers, but never me.
“We need to finish the restructuring plans, and don’t forget to go in for a final suit fitting for Ares and Hannah’s wedding. It’s coming up far sooner than you think.”
I lean back as I think about everything we have on our plates for the next few months. If I can pull this off, I’ll finally be able to make my father’s dreams come true. We’re so close.
Each of my siblings and I handle different areas of the Windsor conglomerate. Between us, we handle finance, media and PR, hotels, motor vehicles and tech, real estate, and some foreign holdings.
They’re all industries the Windsors have entered in the last fifty years, under my grandmother’s guidance. We’ve been tremendously successful, but it’s the Finance industry we entered first. It’s Windsor Finance, and The Windsor Bank, that we’re best known for.
The company I run is the one my father ran before me. He may no longer be here to witness the direction I’ve taken with his firm, but I still want to make him proud. The vision he didn’t have a chance to realize is the one I’ll pursue.
Valentina logs into my laptop with a swipe of her index finger, and it suddenly occurs to me how much I’ve grown to trust her over the years. She’s the only one who knows about my expansion plans. I might not like her a whole lot, but I suspect Windsor Finance wouldn’t be what it is today without her.
When did it all change? I hated her when Grandma hired her and forced me to take her under my wing. Being employed directly by my grandmother meant I could never fire her, no matter how badly I wanted to — and I tried. I’ve tried everything to get rid of her, but I never could. At what point did I stop trying to chase her away?
“You’ll be my date to Ares’s wedding,” I inform her, my eyes roaming over her. “You know the drill. Keep every one of those fucking airheaded socialites away from me and steer me toward everyone we must network with. I’ll give you the guest list, and I expect you to know everything about everyone. This isn’t just a wedding.”
She nods and pastes a smile on her face. “Of course. I’ll be there, and I’ll be sure to remember everything there is to know, right down to names of every pet, child, and mistress.”
I nod and lean back against the sofa, my eyes drifting over her body. When did she go from being the woman I hated more than anything to becoming the one I trust above everyone else?
Chapter Three
Valentina
“She’s a fool,” my mother mutters, her eyes glued to the television. She’s enraptured by the scene playing out in front of us, her face contorting in pain when the woman in the Telenovela we’re watching dismisses the lipstick on her husband’s shirt. “What a pitiful fool.”
Mom’s voice is tinged with a bitterness so strong I can taste it on my tongue. It envelops me and seeps in so deep that my own mood plummets. I instinctively tense, dread washing over me as I mentally prepare for the words I know will follow.
“You can’t trust men,” she says, perhaps more to herself than to me. “In the end, they’re all the same. Every single one of them will betray you eventually, trampling all over your heart and leaving you with the broken pieces of the life you thought you’d share.”
I stare at her, admiring her grit even as despair seeps in. I would be the last person to ever deny how much she’s been through, but she fails to see how much damage she’s doing — to herself and everyone around her. “Is that what I am to you, Mom? A broken piece? A reminder of the past?” The words I’d normally keep buried deep within roll off my tongue before I have a chance to swallow them down.
Mom’s eyes flash as she turns to face me. “You know that isn’t what I meant. If that’s how I felt, I wouldn’t have worked three jobs all my life just so I could raise you. If I hadn’t been working this hard, I wouldn’t be in this state now,” she tells me, her gaze dropping to her legs.
The torment in her eyes tears me apart, and I instantly regret my words. If not for me, Mom wouldn’t have been working in the factory that caused her to lose her mobility. Her legs will never be the same again, and she’ll never be able to stand for more than an hour without being in excruciating pain. She might not explicitly say it, but I know she blames me. If I hadn’t insisted on going to college, she wouldn’t have taken that job.
Guilt hits me square in the chest, yet there’s a hint of that same bitterness my mother just voiced blooming within me too. She may have had to sacrifice a lot for me, but I’ve done all I can to repay her.
“While your father raised his other child in pure luxury, he left us to starve,” she grumbles. “He never looked back, not even when I struggled to buy you a winter coat, or when you couldn’t afford your college tuition.”
I force a smile, my heart heavy. It’s always the same story. Her hatred for my father runs deep, and while I don’t blame her, I wish she’d move on. It’s been 21 years, and the venom she clings to is poisoning her and everything she touches. Hatred has taken more from her than my father ever did.
I sigh and force a smile as guilt articulates my next words. “But now you don’t have to work another day in your life, Mom,” I tell her softly. “I make more than enough to support both of us and Abuela for the rest of our lives.”
Luca pays me an excessively high salary, and on top of that, he’s provided me with an apartment near the office, and a car with a driver. He might be the devil incarnate, but he compensates me well for the ridiculous hours he asks me to work.
Mom nods and smiles at me, genuinely this time. “I’m proud of you,” she says, her voice soft. “I always knew you’d make it far. You inherited my intelligence, after all. You’ve had opportunities I could only dream of when I was your age.”
I look away and try to push down the tinge of resentment I feel. Just once, I’d love for her to acknowledge my success without making it all about her. I love my mother beyond words, but she was never there when I was growing up. Unlike what she seems to believe, she wasn’t the one who raised me. That was all Abuela.
Will there ever come a time that she’ll look at me and truly see me? Sometimes it feels like all I am to her is a reflection of herself. Every week, I try my hardest to spend some quality time with her, but every single time, she ends up dwelling on the past, and there’s nothing I can do to steer the conversation back to something more positive. I’m growing tired of trying, and even more so, I’m growing tired of the way I feel every time I see her.