Valentina pov.
I couldn’t hide it anymore.
I had tried to suppress that intense, burning emotion that surged through me whenever I was near this man-this stranger, Damien. For some reason, my heart ached with a mix of betrayal, anger, and…
Something else I couldn’t quite name.
Was it love?
No, that was absurd. How could I love someone who wasn’t my husband? Alexander was my husband, and I loved him.
I did.
“Mrs. Emily…” Damien’s deep voice finally shattered the heavy silence, pulling me from my thoughts that began immediately after Alexander and Julian left the dining. Reluctantly, I tore my gaze away from my untouched food and glanced up at him.
Once again, my heart squeezed tightly, and I inhaled a sharp breath as I came face to face with him.
His blond hair was neatly styled back, and his blue eyes locked onto mine with a polite smile that, for some reason, grated on my nerves.
“Mrs. Emily, I want to apologize for yesterday. I feel like I may have done something wrong and annoyed you. Will you please forgive me if I did?” he asked, his voice calm and sincere.
I frowned, the words leaving my lips before my brain could stop them.
“No, I can never forgive you.”
The moment the words left my mouth, we both froze. His polite smile faltered, confusion flickering in his eyes.
“What?” he asked, his tone laced with surprise.
My eyes widened as I scrambled to fix my blunder, forcing a smile and waving my hands dismissively.
“No, no, I meant there’s nothing to forgive, Mr. Damien. I’m not upset by any means,” I said quickly, letting out a nervous chuckle. “If anything, I should be the one asking for forgiveness. I spilled a drink on your… sister? Wife?” I asked, trailing off awkwardly.
“My sister, Tessa.” He corrected with a smile. “My wife is Caelina, and she asked me to greet you. She wanted to know if you’d like to go out together sometime soon,” he said. A frown slowly formed on my lips as his words registered.
Hmm, I didn’t like the idea-no, scratch that, I hated it.
“I see, well” Before I could respond, a loud scream cut through the air, stopping me mid-sentence.
“Master Felix! Master Felix, stop running or you’ll fall! Oh my goodness!”
I snapped my head to the right at the sound of Martha’s frantic voice.
Running down the stairs with unsteady enthusiasm was Felix, his tiny legs carrying him as fast as they could, ignoring the maids’ desperate attempts to stop him.
I gasped as Felix took a sharp turn, narrowly avoiding the maid who had attempted to grab him but ended up crashing to the ground with a loud thud.
He paused briefly, glancing back at the fallen maid with a mischievous glint in his eyes. The corner of his lips curled into an evil smirk before he spun around and dashed toward me, his tiny arms spread wide.
I quickly stood up, catching him just in time. My arms wrapped around his tiny frame as I stared at him in shock.
Oh my God! How fast is this kid? It was incredible how he had easily avoided an entire army of maids chasing after him.
“Little demon,” someone muttered behind me. Before I could turn and glare at whoever dared to call him that, Felix’s small hand reached out to my cheek, pulling my attention back to him.
He leaned in, placing a soft kiss on my cheek with a blinding smile before mouthing, “Good morning, Mommy,” with the most adorable expression I had ever seen.
Gosh, my heart.
“Good morning, kid. How did you sleep?” I asked, tapping his nose with a smile. I couldn’t understand why, but seeing Felix made all the emotions vanish in an instant, replacing the ache in my heart with pure joy.
Felix mouthed the words, “It was good, thank you, Mommy,” but then, as if realizing we had company, he turned his head to the side. His eyes narrowed, fixing on something with a cold look.
I followed his gaze, my eyes landing on Damien, who seemed frozen in place, unsure of how to react under Felix’s intense scrutiny. Felix tilted his head slightly, his expression shifting from curiosity to suspicion.
For a brief moment, no one spoke or moved until Damien cleared his throat, his mouth opening as if to say something. But Felix, in that very instant, turned his gaze and blatantly ignored him, as if Damien were nothing more than dust beneath his shoe.
My eye twitched, and so did Damien’s, but before either of us could react, Felix stretched out his hand, and almost immediately, Martha appeared out of nowhere and handed him his notebook. I watched as he scribbled something quickly before showing it to me with an innocent smile, making sure Damien could read it too.
I swear, I almost choked on my spit as I read the words he had written.
“Mommy, who is this ugly uncle? Can you tell him he’s sitting in my chair and getting it dirty with his filth?
Yes, a five-year-old wrote that.
After muttering several apologies to Damien for Felix’s rude behavior, he stood up and sat in the other seat with a stiff smile, assuring me that everything was fine and that Felix was just an adorable kid. Despite the compliment, Felix simply scoffed coldly and continued eating his food happily, not sparing a glance at Damien.
I couldn’t understand it. Felix wasn’t particularly nice to anyone, but he didn’t usually show such disdain for others. He was generally a quiet kid, but today, I could feel the hatred raidating from him toward Damien.
“Take it, Mommy,” Felix mouthed, shoving another piece of broccoli into my plate with a bright smile, as if he were doing me a favor by making me eat the broccoli he didn’t like.
I almost rolled my eyes but held back, choosing not to say anything.
“Thank you, kid,” I smiled, also placing one of the pieces of broccoli from my plate back onto his. “Take this too.”
His smile faltered when he saw it, and he pouted, shifting the broccoli away as if it were poison.
Seeing this, I couldn’t help but laugh and ruffle his hair. “Eat your broccoli, it’s good for your body. It’ll help you grow up strong like your daddy.”
As soon as I said that, his lips curled in disdain, and he pushed the broccoli even further, as if I had just uttered the most ridiculous thing in the world.
“Haha, ain’t you a stubborn little fox.” I joke with a smile but immediately after my words, I felt Damien’s intense gaze on me.
“Valentina,” he muttered under his breath, but it was loud enough for me to hear.
I turned to look at him sharply, my mouth opening as I stared at him in shock. Everything around me seemed to freeze.
What did he just say?
He blinked, as if realizing what he had just uttered. “I’m sorry, my late wife used to say that sentence a lot, so I just…”
However, before he could finish his sentence, a loud gunshot rang through the air, stopping him.
I must have heard wrong! That couldn’t have been a gunshot, right?!
Almost immediately, the guards, the maids, and even freaking Martha, who couldn’t be past 70, dropped what they were doing and reached for their guns, rushing to stand guard in front of Felix and me.
My eyes widened, and my heart raced as I turned my head toward the door. Before I could process what was happening, the door slammed open with force.
And, like something straight out of an action movie, people dressed in black barged in and started firing shots everywhere.
My mouth hung open as Martha and the rest returned fire, stray bullets flying dangerously close to me.
“Take the madam and the young master away this instant!” Martha barked the orders, snapping me out of my daze. It hit me then-Felix was also in danger.
My heart pounded against my chest as I turned to him, desperate to pull him to safety. But I froze in place when I saw him, amidst the chaos, still glaring at the broccoli on his plate as if nothing was happening around him-as if all this was normal to him.
Huh?
Before I could react, my hand was yanked, and I was swiftly pulled from my seat. In an instant, I felt the cold press of metal against my temple.
“Oh my God!” I froze, my heart racing as I stared at the murderous eyes of the man who had a gun pressed to my head.
“Emily Knight. Our boss wants your head” The man said, holding me tighter against him but in the next second, before he could pull the trigger, I was yanked from his grasp, my body colliding with a hard chest that I could have sworn felt like a wall.
The air rushed from my lungs as I looked up to find Alexander’s intense gaze on me, his brow furrowed. Without breaking eye contact, he pulled the trigger, the bullet going straight into the skull of the man who had just been holding me moments ago.