Chapter 6: What Alessandro Asked
He was waiting in the small anteroom off the main corridor — a narrow room with two chairs and a window that looked out onto the hotel garden.
He was still in his wedding suit.
His tie had been loosened.
That was the only visible change.
Rosalie closed the door behind her.
"Sit down," he said.
"I'm fine standing."
"Please." He said it differently the second time.
Less instruction, more need.
She sat.
He stayed on his feet, one hand braced against the window frame, looking out at the garden without appearing to see it.
"She showed me the letters," he said.
"I know."
He turned.
"How do you know?"
"Elena told me.
Just now, downstairs."
Something moved across his face.
Not anger.
Something older than anger.
"My mother knew," he said.
It wasn't a question.
"She found out recently.
She said she should have told you sooner.
She knows that."
He turned back to the window.
"Serena wrote to my father," he said.
"Six times.
Over two years.
She wanted to come back.
She wanted to see Livia." His voice was very controlled.
The kind of controlled that takes effort.
"She didn't leave because she wanted to.
She left because my father made it the only option she had."
"Yes."
"And I spent five years believing she abandoned our daughter."
Rosalie didn't fill the silence.
There was nothing useful to put in it.
"Livia used to ask me," he said.
"When she was four, five.
She'd ask why her mama didn't come to her birthday.
I told her that some people find it hard to stay.
That it wasn't Livia's fault." He exhaled.
"I believed that.
I believed I was telling her the truth."
"You were telling her what you knew."
"It wasn't the truth."
"No," Rosalie said.
"It wasn't."
He turned from the window and looked at her.
Really looked at her, the way he rarely did — directly, without the professional distance he usually maintained between them.
"I need to ask you something," he said.
"And I need you to answer honestly, not carefully."
"All right."
"Did you know?
Any of it.
About Serena.
About my father."
"No." She held his gaze.
"I heard her name once, from your sister, a long time ago.
She didn't say more than the name and I didn't ask.
That's everything I knew."
He studied her face for a moment.
Then nodded.
"Bianca is telling me," he said slowly, "that if I call off the wedding, she'll make sure the story about my father and Serena becomes public.
She says she has copies of the letters.
She says she'll send them to the press."
Rosalie felt something go cold in her.
"She's threatening you."
"She's negotiating." His jaw tightened.
"That's how she framed it.
She said she's not trying to hurt anyone.
She just wants us to move forward.
She said the medical record doesn't change anything that matters, and that if I'm willing to be reasonable, none of the rest of it needs to go anywhere."
"She cut your daughter's hair."
"I know."
"She stood in that room and told a seven-year-old girl that she trims her dog the same way."
"I know, Rosalie."
"And now she's threatening to destroy your family's reputation if you don't marry her anyway."
He said nothing.
"Alessandro." Rosalie leaned forward.
"What is it you actually want to ask me?"
He was quiet for a long moment.
"Do you think Livia would be all right?" he said finally.
"If I called it off.
If today became — this.
If she grew up knowing that her father almost made a terrible mistake and stopped in time." He pressed his hand flat against the wall.
"Or do you think she needs the stability.
The structure.
Even if the person—"
"Stop." Rosalie's voice came out more firmly than she intended.
"Don't finish that sentence."
He looked at her.
"Livia does not need a woman who called her a dog in her mother's place," she said.
"She needs her father to show her what it looks like when someone chooses correctly.
Even when it's hard."
Alessandro stared at her.
Then, very quietly: "And if Bianca releases the letters?"
"Then the truth comes out," Rosalie said.
"And maybe that's what needed to happen."
He looked at her for a long moment.
Something shifted in his face — not resolution yet, but the beginning of it.
His phone buzzed on the chair beside him.
He glanced at the screen.
May you like
His expression changed completely.
"It's Serena," he said.
