Garden of Roses ✔️

Chapter 37

Dante

I watched her with admiration and awe while she fought, finding myself unable to move for a few moments. I asked myself once again a question I wasn't sure I wanted to know the answer to. How does such a beautiful creature become such a deadly weapon?

I couldn't look her in the eye. I know she wanted me to. She needed me to, but I just couldn't.

When she told me about what Isabella said to her, I wasn't mad at her. She probably thought I was, but I wasn't. I was furious with Isabella and myself. It reminded me of all the harm that woman did to her and in what state she was after their little talk. I still didn't know the details of the talk and what it was exactly that Isabella told her, but I knew that it shook her deeply. I should've taken better care of her. I should've kept her away from Isabella at any cost.

Although, now wasn't the time to hold her hand. If Isabella was planning something, I had to be focused one hundred percent and not let her get away with it. I couldn't let her hurt my family any more than she already has. Isabella already took too much from us all.

But then she had to go and say something about her. I hoped she was bluffing. I looked at her and waited for her to tell me what Isabella thought was going on here so I could shoot her already. Instead, she looked terrified. She looked absolutely in horror from what Isabella was going to tell me, and I had to know what it was.

I prepared myself for it to be bad, but not this bad. As Isabella spoke the words your little friend from the past, something clicked in my head, although I couldn't acknowledge or accept it just yet.

Chills went through my body while I looked at her up and down as if it was the first time I was seeing her. Well, it was kind of the first time I was seeing her. By the time my eyes locked with hers again, my blood was ice cold, and I was struggling to make my lungs expand and inhale.

How could it be her? How could it possibly be her? She was dead. My father told me she was killed along with her family that night. I mourned her. I cried over her death like it was my own. It felt like my own.

That little girl was the main reason I felt like smiling. She was the reason I held onto hope that my life wouldn't be an endless dark pit of emotionless violence.

While taking hits from my father's hand, I held onto the hope that later, he would let me go to her and we would play together. She was going to help me forget about what was happening at home and just play with me, make me laugh, and I would make her laugh. She succeeded in making me forget every time. We played hide and seek all over her mother's garden. I always found her quickly because she couldn't stop giggling. Sometimes I pretended to look for her all over the place just so I could hear her giggles for a while longer.

She always sounded so damn happy. So pure and innocent, and I wished that I could feel as free and happy as she did. I knew that it was impossible for me, but just being around her already made me feel better. Her energy was so powerful that when I was with her, I didn't need to be the regular happy child to be able to feel like one.

I wanted to bring Camilla with me when I went to play with that little sunshine. She needed the joy as much as I did, but she always said that if she got out of the house, Father would punish both of us. He once told me it was my responsibility to protect my sister and not let her go out for her own good. It didn't make any sense to me, but Camilla insisted on staying inside, not wanting to give our father one more reason to punish us.

When my little friend gave me that dinosaur figurine, it didn't only make me extremely happy, but Camilla too. The two of us played with it in secret and took terms hiding it in our pillowcases so Father wouldn't find out. And he never did.