Prologue (Giovanni)

Loving Sofia Moretti means learning how to let her go. Even if it breaks me. Even if I have to harden my heart to survive it.

I tell myself that as I build another damn bookshelf for her.

It’s stupid, a man like me, someone who’s taken bullets, broken bones, and knifed a guy in an alley without hesitating now kneeling on the floor of a pastel-painted bookshop, covered in sawdust, assembling furniture like some suburban dad but Sofia asked for help and apparently, that’s all it takes to turn me into a willing idiot.

She’s halfway across the room, folding baby clothes into neat stacks. There’s a soft glow about her, something warm and radiant, the first peace I’ve seen touch her face in months. Her belly brushes the edge of the counter as she sorts through an order of onesies she swears she bought “accidentally.”

She’s months pregnant and it's not my child.

I tighten the screw on the shelf, ignoring the sharp twist in my chest.

“Are you sure this is straight?” I ask, pretending like my pulse isn’t doing violence inside my ribs.

Sofia looks up. “You’ve checked that thing twelve times already.”

“Yeah, well,” I mutter, “I don’t want it falling on the baby.”

Her smile softens something inside me that has no business softening. “You’re sweet,” she says.

Sweet.

Right.

If only she knew the things I’ve done. The things I’ve felt. The things I’ve wanted.

Her fingers brush over a stack of tiny bibs, and something in her expression flickers, uncertainty, fear, maybe something sadder.

I say nothing. I’ve learned that when it comes to Sofia, silence gets me farther than anything else but today… I need the truth.

“Sofia,” I say finally, my voice steady even though my stomach isn’t, “can I ask you something?”

She hesitates, a tiny pause that cuts me open. “Yeah. Sure.”

“What do you think about… everything?” I gesture vaguely, the bookstore, the baby, the whole new life she’s stitching together from the ashes. “About him.”

Him.

I can’t even say Luca’s name without feeling like I’m chewing glass. Sofia exhales and leans against the counter, hands on her belly. “It’s complicated.”

“Try me.”

She laughs bitterly, but it’s soft. “I’m mad at him,” she admits. “So mad.”

I nod once. Encouraging.

“He lied. Constantly. He made decisions for my life without ever asking me. He went behind my back. He…” Her voice cracks. “He broke me.”

I feel something ugly bloom in my chest — hope, sharp and selfish but she isn’t finished.

“And I don’t understand why he did it,” she continues. “Or why he couldn’t just trust me to make my own choices. I’m raising this baby alone. I’m doing all of this alone.”

She swipes at the corner of her eye, frustrated.

“I have every reason in the world to hate him.”

I swallow. “Yeah,” I say quietly. “You do.”

Her gaze meets mine, and for one perfect, disastrous second, I let myself believe she’ll say the words I’ve been dying to hear.

I choose you.

But Sofia inhales, slow and shaking.

“And I still love him.”

The words hit like a punch I never see coming. My hands go still on the edge of the shelf. I look down, jaw clenching, lungs burning like I’ve been running. Of course she does.

“Gio?” she murmurs, frowning at the change in my expression. “Did I say something wrong?”

“No,” I manage, even though my voice is gravel. “Just… processing.”

She steps closer, misunderstanding everything in the worst possible way.

“I just want my child to have a father,” she says softly. “Luca wasn’t all bad. He was protective. Loyal. He made me feel… safe.” She swallows. “He loved me hard. And I loved him back.”

Each word lands like a blade but it’s the next part that does me in:

“And if he came here,” she whispers, “and asked for my forgiveness… depending on how he said it… I might give him another chance.”

Something in me ruptures. Not violently. Just… quietly. Irreversibly. My last sliver of hope bleeds out onto this dusty bookstore floor.

She doesn’t notice. She thinks I’m just reflecting. She thinks the tightness in my jaw is judgment, not heartbreak.

But something shifts inside me, a hinge opening, a door closing, I don’t know. Something final and for the first time since I met her, I see the truth clearly:

I am not her future.

I never was.

And holding onto a woman who is already halfway back in another man’s arms will destroy me.

So I smile. Or something close to it. Something steady enough not to scare her.

“That’s good,” I say quietly. “A kid deserves a father.”

She beams.

I look at her glow, her tired eyes, her small hopeful smile… and I make the only choice a man like me can make.

I harden my heart.

I rebuild my walls.

I let her go.

Not because I want to but because it’s the only way I survive the loss of her.