10 Chapter 10
Joyful laughter echoed through the manor. Who would have ever imagined that the fearsome Don Torrino, a man whose name struck terror into the hearts of all, was as happy as a child in this moment.
“So… Sophia… she isn’t…”
“While Sophia may not be your daughter, she is, without a doubt, your husband’s flesh and blood. That maid who took a bullet for you? She climbed into his bed a long time
ago!”
I had someone send her back to the Kovalenko home.
As I turned to leave, she suddenly scrambled toward me like a madwoman, throwing her arms around my legs. “Katya, won’t you call me Mom just one more time?”
After that, I never saw a single member of the Kovalenko family again.
“You couldn’t even recognize your own flesh and blood. You don’t deserve to be called
a mother!”
I thought I would never shed another tear for her, but when I lifted a hand to my face, I
realized it was drenched.
I had the maids read them aloud to me for a laugh.
“But do you know what? It was all a lie she fed you. She was terrified her own precious daughter would have no one to lean on, terrified she might face the slightest hardship, so she made it all up! How pathetic. You were completely fooled for ten long years!”
The letters he sent were filled with nothing but pain and regret, occasionally touching upon memories from our youth.
“You’re about to be a father, and you’re still this jealous?”
Sophia had long since been tormented into madness, so Marcus simply sent her to a mental asylum in the countryside, where she was doomed to spend the rest of her life in a stupor.
“So, that’s why you completely ignored me, letting Sophia torment me however she pleased. Every time you lost your temper, you’d throw that one line in my face-that I
didn’t act like your daughter!”
Her lips trembled as she shook her head in disbelief.
My parents came to blows over Sophia’s parentage. One ended up with a broken leg, a cripple, while the other was so consumed by rage that they became bedridden.
“No! That’s impossible!”
I caressed my belly and whispered, “I finally understand. A true family isn’t about blood; it’s about choice.”
She would spend the rest of her life drowning in regret.
The reality too much to bear, she fainted.
“Hmph, who even writes letters these days? So old-fashioned and dull!”
I gave her a cool glance and leaned close to her ear.
Marcus often came to the Torrino estate looking for me, standing at the gates for the better part of the day.
By the end, I was screaming, my voice raw and cracked.
“You’re the one… you’re my daughter?”
“I’m going to be a father!”
“I… How could I have believed something like that? How could I have treated you this way?”
But news of them still reached my ears.
“I almost forgot to tell you…”
”
“What’s so interesting about these two sheets of paper, anyway?” I opened my eyes to see Dante pouting jealously. Lazily, I propped myself up and casually tossed the letter into the fireplace.
The first half of my life was filled with hardship and cold neglect, but for the rest of my days, there will only be sunshine.
It was as if her very soul had been ripped from her body. She collapsed to the floor, her parched lips opening and closing, but for the longest time, no words came out.
I could have accepted the neglect from my own mother, but I couldn’t accept that it all stemmed from such a ludicrous lie.
Dante shot up from the couch in an instant, sweeping me into his arms and spinning me around. “Really, Katya?”
