The One Who Always Stood Behind

Nineteen years old.

I met Alessandro Moretti at a summer gala the Romano and Moretti families threw together to mark twenty years of business partnership.

Valentina was six months into an internship at a fashion house in Paris that year, so she wasn’t there.

Alessandro came up to me early in the evening and asked about the book I was holding — an old Italian novel I’d brought along, half-expecting the party to bore me.

We talked for most of the night, about books, about the trips he wanted to take, about how neither of us could stand the lobster they were serving.

It was an ordinary, genuine start.

Nothing to be suspicious of.

We loved each other in every real sense of the word for almost a year after that — he took me to open-air concerts at the Duomo, remembered my shellfish allergy, called every night just to tell me some small, unremarkable thing that happened that day.

I believed, and I had good reason to believe, that I’d found something real.

Valentina came home from Paris for Easter break, when Alessandro and I had been together eight months.

I brought him home for dinner, wanting to introduce him to her properly for the first time.

Valentina came down the stairs in an ivory silk dress she’d brought back from Paris, her hair still slightly damp from a shower, greeting everyone with a playful mix of French she’d just picked up.

I remember that moment vividly, because I was standing beside Alessandro, my hand in his — and I felt his hand still, just for a second.

Only a second.

But the way he looked at Valentina wasn’t like any look he’d ever given a stranger.

It was the look of someone who had just seen something he never expected to see.

I told myself I was imagining it.

He behaved perfectly all through dinner — poured my wine first, kept his arm around me on the way out.

But from that night on, something had begun to shift, so slowly I couldn’t pinpoint exactly where it started.

He began asking about Valentina a little more, every time I mentioned her.

He remembered the day she flew back to Paris, remembered the name of the gallery she’d just started collaborating with.

Some nights he’d pick me up later than usual, blaming traffic or a meeting that ran long.

And I, because I trusted him, never once thought to ask twice.

It would be a long time before I pieced the whole thing together: that during Valentina’s short visits home over the following year, she and Alessandro had begun something quiet between them — texts deleted the moment they were read, brief meetings carefully arranged to look accidental.

Both of them careful enough to leave no trace, and Valentina confident enough that her own twin sister would never suspect a thing — because I never had any reason to doubt her.