Page 54 of Modern Romance December 2025 5-8

And then he walked out.

No arguments. No threats. No discussion.

Leaving Mimi alone with their son.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The sleek blackchauffeur-driven Bentley pulled up to the entrance of the Mayfair Grand DiCarlo, its golden lights spilling onto the rain-slicked pavement. London glowed, festive and alive, twinkling in the drizzle.

Inside the car, Mimi sat frozen, her fingers curled around the cold glass of her award.

She had won.

Best Documentary.

She should have been elated. She should have been riding the high of the applause, the champagne toasts, the congratulations. And yet all she could think about washim.

The moment they announced her name, the small banquet hall had erupted.

Thunderous waves of applause had rolled over her, shaking the air, stealing her breath. Strangers had stood for her. Her peers and friends and her parents had cheered.

It was a small achievement in a small career, but she was proud of herself. Because her best work had come when she had persevered through the roughest year of her life.

And yet she wasn’t…happy.

She felt as if she were bodily present but absent in spirit, as if she were playacting in someone else’s life. It had been the same in the last week since she had left Venice.

Because the only person she had wanted to share her achievement and her joy with wasn’t there.

Renzo wasn’t there.

It had been his voice in her ear in those fractious weeks when Luca was still at the hospital. Asking her to tell him about her latest project. Then, low and certain, urging her to apply for the award when she’d nearly talked herself out of it. When she’d sat at her laptop, doubting every word of the essay she’d written for the application, wondering if the documentary she’d worked on during her pregnancy was too bleak, it had been his belief in her passion that had made her press Send.

You’re not just talented,cara, but hold a unique perspective. Let the world see it.

She had ached to turn to him, to see his face in the crowd, to rush into his arms and hear that deep, gravelly voice in her ear again. To hear him call her his clever, competent, sexy-as-sin wife again. To see the glimmer of pride in his eyes.

But he hadn’t been there.

And in the days since she had left, he hadn’t called her even once. Their nanny made sure he chatted with Luca every morning and evening.

Her chest twisted in a tight, painful knot when she heard the deep lilt of his Italian as he greeted their son. Her soul ached to lay eyes on him. She had resisted.

And yet when she’d accepted the award and looked into the glare of flashbulbs and cameras in the crowd, for just a second, she’d thought she’d seen him.

Tall, unmistakably handsome, watching her with that quiet, unreadable intensity that always made her pulse skitter.

She had felt it in how her nape prickled, how her body sang. She had felt him close.

But when she had stepped off the stage, searching, there had been no sign of him. Of course, Renzo wasn’t there.

It was just another trick of her own foolish mind, another cruel mirage her hopeless love offered to soothe her.

God, she was going mad. Seeing him in places he wasn’t, hearing his voice in echoes that didn’t exist.

The driver cleared his throat, and she realized the car had stopped.

Right. The hotel.