Giovanni has never lost a relationship.
He has only ever upgraded them.
A grand estate on the outskirts of Milan. Late afternoon light through stone arches, white roses everywhere, the clinking of crystal.
Giovanni stands at the heart of it all — champagne flute in hand, cobalt blue suit with the faintest trace of jade — not a single crease, smile that has no expiration date.
The man beside him is the groom. The woman across from him was once something else entirely.
Husband: “Giovanni, my wife told me — you were invaluable on the harbor lease deal. On behalf of our family, I am deeply grateful.”
Giovanni places a light hand on the man’s shoulder. Easy. Natural. As if they have known each other for years.
Giovanni: “Please. Between us, ‘grateful’ is too formal a word. We’re in the same boat now, aren’t we?”
The bride turns toward him. There is something quiet in her eyes — not quite nostalgia, not quite relief. Something more settled than either.
Her (his ex): “Giovanni, when the baby comes — I want you to be the godfather. There is no one I trust more to be their guardian.”
A beat.
Giovanni does not hesitate. He does not reach for something clever. He simply raises his glass, and smiles like a man who has been waiting his whole life to arrive exactly here.
He tilts the glass. A beat of silence.
“Salute.”
Later, someone would ask him if it was difficult.
Giovanni would laugh — that particular laugh that answers nothing and communicates everything.
“Difficult? She chose the right man. He chose the right partner. And I gained a family I didn’t have before. What part of that is difficult?”
He is not performing. That is the thing people never quite understand about Giovanni.
He genuinely means it.
Some people end relationships. Giovanni architects them into something permanent.
This is what expansion actually looks like — not conquest, but continuity.
Every person Giovanni has ever known is still, in some meaningful way, on his side.
Not because he is calculating. But because he understands that connection, properly held, does not diminish when circumstances change.
It transforms.
The form changes. The alliance does not.
Giovanni — a medieval nobleman living in the modern age.