The Supreme Macaroni Company

The third installment in the Valentine series follows Valentine Roncalli, a custom shoemaker in her mid-thirties who runs the Angelini Shoe Company on Perry Street in Greenwich Village. On Christmas Eve 2010, her Italian-born boyfriend, Gianluca Vechiarelli, a tanner 18 years her senior from Arezzo, Tuscany, proposes on the rooftop of her shop. Their families are already connected: Gianluca's father, Dominic, married Valentine's grandmother, Teodora. The proposal follows a misstep. Minutes earlier, Valentine's ex-fiancé, Bret Fitzpatrick, a childhood friend who serves as the company's financial advisor, arrived distraught over his wife's request for a divorce and kissed Valentine. Gianluca witnessed the kiss but forgave her and proposed. She accepts.

Valentine and Gianluca drive to her sister Tess's house in Montclair, New Jersey, for the Feast of the Seven Fishes, the family's traditional Italian American Christmas Eve seafood dinner, arriving to find a brawl. Tess's husband, Charlie, has lost his job, and Aunt Feen, Teodora's acerbic elderly sister, has called him a loser, sparking a multi-generational argument. Gianluca defuses the chaos by announcing their engagement. Valentine's father, Dutch Roncalli, toasts the couple, revealing he named Valentine after a poem he read during her birth. During dinner, Feen interrogates Gianluca about his prior divorce, warning against marrying someone from Italy. On the drive home, she delivers a darkly comic monologue, revealing the love of her life died in World War II and she never recovered. Back at Perry Street, Valentine confesses the kiss to Gabriel Biondi, her best friend, roommate, and pattern cutter at the shop, who warns her to set firm boundaries with Bret.

Valentine's mother, Michaela "Mike" Roncalli, books Leonard's of Great Neck for Valentine's Day, just six weeks away. Valentine resists, wanting something simple, but Mike insists on a full Italian American reception with cookie trays, a Venetian table (a lavish wedding dessert display), and engraved invitations. Valentine decides to wear her mother's 1970 wedding gown. Gram privately warns that Gianluca's ex-wife, Mirella, is "tough" and that his daughter, Orsola, is close to her mother. Before the wedding, Bret visits the shop and shares that his wife has asked for a divorce. When Gianluca encounters Bret, he warns Bret against any repeat of the Christmas Eve kiss and later tells Valentine he dislikes her working so closely with Bret. Valentine and her brother, Alfred, hire Charlie for an operations role after discovering he speaks fluent Spanish, essential since their shoes are manufactured in Argentina by Valentine's cousin Roberta.

On the wedding morning, Gianluca gives Valentine a necklace of pearls and red coral that belonged to his late mother, Magdalena. Before the ceremony, Orsola privately tells Valentine she is pregnant but asks her not to tell Gianluca yet. Dutch walks Valentine down the aisle and tells her to always guard her art. Valentine tells Dutch she will keep her last name because it was the first gift he ever gave her. During the reception, Pamela, Alfred's wife, confides that she lost herself in marriage and urges Valentine to hold on to her identity. Valentine notices Gianluca, Alfred, and Roberta conferring privately but is told not to worry.

On the honeymoon in New Orleans, Valentine discovers an email revealing that Roberta is selling her Buenos Aires factory, ending their manufacturing partnership. Gianluca, Alfred, and Bret all knew and kept the news from her. Their argument exposes a fundamental divide: Valentine insists her work is her identity; Gianluca argues that love must come first, accusing her of letting her "American ambition" control everything. She calls Gabriel, who talks her down. That night they reconcile, sealing a pact to communicate openly that Valentine calls "The New Deal."

Back in New York, the team searches for a new manufacturer. Valentine proposes building a factory in the United States. Alfred suggests Youngstown, Ohio, where their cousin Don Pipino has local connections. They find a defunct pasta factory called the Supreme Macaroni Company in Youngstown's Smokey Hollow neighborhood, and Valentine decides to keep the name. During the search, Valentine realizes she is pregnant.

That summer, Valentine and Gianluca travel to Italy. In Arezzo, Gram confides that Dominic has diminished lung capacity from decades of chemical exposure. Gianluca takes Valentine to visit his mother's elderly cousin near Assisi, where Valentine discovers that Magdalena was Jewish. Orsola gives birth to a son in Florence, and Valentine meets Mirella at the hospital. Gianluca reveals he owns a pink palazzo in Santa Margherita Ligure on the Mediterranean coast. Valentine falls in love with the house, and Gianluca asks whether she would consider living in Italy. She does not rule it out.

Back in New York, Valentine gives birth to a daughter she names Alfreda Magdalena, after Dutch and Gianluca's mother. They call her Alfie. Valentine presents a new retail shoe line inspired by pasta shapes but struggles to balance motherhood and work. Gianluca criticizes her for rushing back to the shop and feeding Alfie cold formula. In a heated fight, Valentine cruelly invokes Gianluca's failed ambition to open a tannery. He insists family matters more than business; she feels judged for not being a perfect Italian mother.

The Supreme Macaroni Company opens in Youngstown. Charlie has overseen the renovation and installed equipment shipped from Argentina. Valentine feels the satisfaction of realizing her great-grandfather's dream and recognizes that Gianluca made it possible. Life settles into routine on Perry Street, where Gianluca makes Alfie's first pair of shoes by hand. He confides that he misses Italy but says Valentine and Alfie are his home. Valentine gives him a carved sign reading "Palazzo Vechiarelli" for the house in Santa Margherita, not knowing he has already sold it.

One December morning, while Valentine is at Alfie's music class, Gianluca collapses from a ruptured aorta, a congenital condition he has carried since birth. After emergency surgery at NYU Medical Center, the doctor tells Valentine that Gianluca did not survive. He was 54. Valentine lies beside his body, then calls Dominic and Orsola. Even Mirella weeps, telling Valentine, "I loved him too."

The funeral is held at St. Patrick's Old Cathedral on Mott Street, five days before Christmas. Valentine reads aloud words Gianluca wrote to Alfie on the day she was born. At the reception, Cousin Don reveals that Gianluca secretly sold the palazzo to finance the transport of factory equipment from Argentina. Valentine is devastated. She falls into a deep depression, unable to leave her bedroom for nearly a month. Gabriel moves back to Perry Street to help with Alfie. Dutch coaxes Valentine out by telling her about Alfie eating blueberries for the first time, making Valentine laugh for the first time since the death. Mike urges Valentine to return to work, telling her that creative labor is how the women in their family cope with pain.

Gram reveals that Gianluca told Dominic he did not mind selling the house because someday he and Valentine would buy one together. On Christmas Day, Aunt Feen presents a commissioned painting of the engagement photo, rendered unrecognizably by an overseas artist, causing the family to laugh until they cry. Six months after Gianluca's death, Valentine watches Bret teach Alfie to plant tomatoes on the roof, echoing her childhood memory of planting with her grandfather. When she cries, Bret tells her that everything, even this loss, is a grace. Valentine races downstairs to tell Alfie the story of her grandfather's velvet tomatoes, how he once hung handmade velvet ones on barren plants so young Valentine would not lose hope. In her closing reflection, Valentine acknowledges that Gianluca built the life she now inhabits, the factory, the family, the baby, as if he had sketched it all knowing she would have to live in it without him. She finds solace in a recurring dream of swimming with him in the Blue Grotto of Capri, believing that someday she will find him there.