Chapter 9
Rhea froze where she stood, too afraid even to turn around.
Dominic stepped inside first. When he saw that I was unharmed, some of the tension finally drained from his face.
Madre Natalie and Vincent followed. Their eyes swept across the wrecked shop, and their faces turned cold.
“What the hell happened here?”
The chaos was quickly contained. They all stared at me, stunned, as if they couldn’t believe I had swung a metal mop
handle at a group of bodyguards.
I set down my ‘weapon’ and said nothing. Ember snorted. “Didn’t you say you weren’t coming back? Guess that was a lie.”
The three of them lowered their heads in embarrassment.
‘Amelia, we’ll clean this up.” Vincent said quietly.
Dominic’s voice rasped. “Just… take care of yourself. Don’t cross paths with people like us again.”
I didn’t bother replying.
Ignored completely, Rhea suddenly shrieked, “Why do you all look at her the moment she shows up? Dominic, I’m your
legal wife! The mayor’s wife!”
‘Don’t forget you were the ones who sent her to the psychiatric ward! Stop pretending to care!”
She shook as she cried, but the three who once adored her only spared her a cold glance, the same way they once looked
at me.
Dominic’s tone turned icy. “I warned you not to disturb her. If it happens again, you won’t be walking out of a psychiatric
facility.
Madre Natalie and Vincent stood by, faces blank. No one defended her. How familiar.
Dominic, shaped by a brutal childhood, had always clung to power with something close to pathology.
In his relationships with anyone, there was always calculation. If he had done this to me back then, of course he could do
the same to Rhea now.
As for Madre Natalie and Vincent, they had always favored the supposedly ‘weaker’ one.
Just as they once sided with newly returned Rhea And just as they now pitied the ‘fallen” version of me
A sharp cry broke through my thoughts. Victor, one of the guards, pointed at Rhea. “Blood… the lady is bleeding!”
Chapter 9
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Her pale dress was soaked with red. Rhea went ghost-white, reaching toward Dominic ‘Save the baby… Dominic, Mother. Vincent….
Not one of them took her hand. Madre Natalie frowned. “The hospital is six blocks away. Don’t perform for us, Rhea. We’ve seen enough theater.”
Dominic’s expression didn’t shift at all, as if the blood wasn’t from his wife, nor from his child. The light in Rhea’s eyes finally went out.
After everyone was gone. Madre Natalie pushed a velvet box across the counter. Vincent whispered hoarsely. “This was… the gift we prepared for you back then.”
“Amelia, this is all we have left to give you.”
I didn’t take it. They left it on the counter and walked out with wet eyes. Dominic lingered the longest. His voice cracked as he spoke.
“If you ever need anything… come to me. The one I loved was always the Amelia who carried me home through that
snowstorm. It was me who betrayed you. Me who lost you.”
He staggered out into the fading light.
Later I heard that the mayor’s SUV breached the guardrail of the Verrazzano. The river took what the city couldn’t, a
man hollowed out by his own ambition.
Pieces of the body were never recovered.
When his wife received the news, she sought the long sleep she’d once tried to force upon me, dying in a penthouse that
felt more like a mausoleum.
Without the mayor’s protection, the Ravello family slipped into obscurity and was soon overshadowed by rising gangs.
I didn’t ask further.
Being strangers in this lifetime was already the best ending we could hope for.
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