And she’s in the kitchen, like always.
Nothing has changed.
And yet, everything has.
I hear the soft clink of a glass being rinsed in the sink, and something inside me coils tighter. My fingers twitch at my sides as I walk in, my boots echoing with deliberate weight. She turns when she hears me. Her eyes widen, just slightly, but her voice is careful, too careful.
“Isabella…”
I don’t answer. I don’t give her the softness she used to demand from me. I’ve shed too much of that girl. She died long before I left this place.
“I’m not here for a reunion,” I say coldly.
She exhales shakily, already bracing herself. But I don’t stop. Not this time.
“I came here to ask you something,” I continue, my voice like broken glass.“How could you let it happen?All of it. The bruises. The starvation. The years I spent in the dark, alone, wondering what I did wrong just by existing.You lied to me my entire life.”
Tears fill her eyes, but I keep going.
“You weren’t even my mother, were you?” I spit, voice trembling with rage. “She died. My real mother. And my father? Fucking Salvatore? Left in a house where I was destroyed, inch by inch, while you watched?”
“I tried,” she whispers, stepping forward, but I step back. Her hands tremble in front of her. “Isabella, you have no idea what it was like. I tried to save you. I wanted to save you. I loved your mother, she was like my sister. She was one of my best friends.”
“Then why didn’t you!?” I scream. “You were right there. You knew. You let him, God, you let him—”
“I couldn’t,” she breathes, voice cracking like a dam breaking. “Because of Lorenzo.”
The name drops like a stone between us.
I blink. “What?”
She looks at me like she’s carrying a coffin inside her chest. “He came, Isabella. Not often at first. A few times a year, maybe. But the older you got, the more you looked like your father, the more your temperament reminded him of Salvatore…” Her voice shudders. “He started coming more. Always watching. Always reminding me what he could take.”
I stare at her, heart hammering. “You’re saying Lorenzo… threatened you?”
She nods, a slow, hollow motion. “He told me if I ever tried to take you away—if I ever stepped between you and your stepfather, he would kill you. With his own hands.”
My stomach twists.
Her hands wring together in front of her chest like they can still stop the past from bleeding through.
“And the marriage,” she whispers. “He forced it. He made me marry that man. I didn’t even know him before our wedding. Just that he was part of the Gambino family, violent, cruel, infamous for what he did to women. Lorenzo knew. That’s why he chose him. Someone to keep me in line. Someone who would keep you under control.”
My vision blurs with fury. I’m shaking. She keeps talking.
“Behind closed doors, he beat me. He’d grab me by the hair and throw me into walls. I covered it with foundation, but some days it wasn’t even possible to cover the damage. He’d whisper threats in my ear while you slept in the next room. If I tried to intervene when he hurt you, he’d tell me I’d never see you again. That he’d take you to places I’d never find. And I believed him.”
She turns and lifts the hem of her blouse slowly.
My breath catches.
A scar. Faint but jagged. Right above her hip.
“He put a tracker under my skin,” she says, her voice hollow. “Said if I ever ran, if I ever thought about disappearing with you, he’d know. He’d find me. And he’d make sure you died for my disobedience.”
I stagger back, hitting the edge of the table behind me.
“I wanted to run,” she says, crying now, shoulders shaking. “God, I wanted to. But there was nowhere to go. I couldn’t get out.”
