Page 23 of Ruthless Claim

I fight a squirm, keeping my back completely straight. “It’s fine. There’s nothing to say.”

Mamma raises one perfectly arched eyebrow. “Valentina Isabelle.”

Fine. When my mother uses my middle name, it means she’s not going to let me talk my way out of this.

“He’s impossible,” I start. “He is—Mamma, he is infuriating. He makes a point to be difficult. He looks at me like I’m shit under his shoes.” I rub my temples in frustration.

“He makes comments. Constant little—last week he walked past me at the island and looked at what I was working on and said”—I pitch my voice lower to mimic Cillian’s brogue—“‘Still deciding which cause to pretend to care about this season?’”

I scowl at the memory, nails biting into my skin. “I was reviewing acquisition proposals for the gallery. I told him that. He said, ‘so someone else does the actual work and you put your name on it, got it,’ and then he left.” I look up at my mother. “He just leaves before I can even⁠—”

“And what do you say to him?” my mother interrupts.

I pause. “I said that I did the actual work, which is true.”

“Before that. What do you say to him, Valentina, when you have the opportunity.”

I really didn’t want my mother to ask this. “I—” I think about all the comments I’ve made recently—the mud in the kitchen, errand boy, the very specific observations I have made about Connor’s organization and Cillian’s position within it and what that says about his capacity for independent thought. “I respond,” I say carefully.

My mother looks at me and one eyebrow lifts by a fraction, which on Gianna Santoro’s face is the equivalent of anyone else throwing their hands up. “I see.”

I fight another squirm. “He starts it,” I say childishly, internally wincing at how juvenile that response is.

“Amore.” Her voice is gentle, but it has that edge that means she’s about to say something I don’t want to hear. “You are both starting it. Every day. From opposite sides of the same apartment.”

She reaches over and takes my hand.

Her grip is firm but loving. “I know you didn’t choose this, and we both know it’s not what we wanted for you. You are allowed to be angry about it, but you cannot sustain a war indefinitely. You will exhaust yourself.” She looks at me compassionately and reaches with her other hand to cup my cheek.

I lean into her touch. “Find some common ground. Some way to share that space that doesn’t require you to be armed every moment of every day. The marriage doesn’t have to be good. It just has to be bearable.”

I want to tell her that bearable has never once been good enough for me. I am twenty-six years old and I would like more from my own life than a negotiated ceasefire with a man I despise in an apartment that doesn’t feel like mine.

I did not spend my entire childhood watching her be gracious and composed and immovable and learn all those things specifically to use them in a situation like this one, only to be told to settle for bearable.

But Mamma has survived things I haven’t had to survive yet, and she is still, after all of it, the most formidable person I know.

“I’ll try,” I finally say because that’s what Mamma expects me to say.

She pats my hand and smiles. “Good girl.”

I am absolutely not a good girl. But I’ll try anyway.

I spend the rest of the afternoon constructing a strategy for civil coexistence. I approach it the way I approach everything: with a plan, clear objectives, and defined success metrics.

Objective: reduce the daily hostility to a manageable level.

Method: one evening of genuine civility to reset the dynamic.

Success metric: getting through dinner without either of us drawing blood.

It sounds simple when I lay it out like that. That should have been my first warning.

By the time I hear Cillian come in at seven, I’ve had three hours to prepare and I am ready.

The table is set.

I did that myself, which took longer than it should have because I had to locate the good placemats in a drawer I hadn’t opened yet.