United

الفصل 50

Mama, Caela, I know you two will always love me, but I think it's time to let go of the grief I bore for the past 11 years.

I withstood everything I endured for you two. But now that I'm so close to facing my father in court, I need to let go. I need to open myself to new opportunities to love.

I am constantly scared of things. Things that you didn't teach me soon enough. I learned how to cook properly by myself during the years, thanks to my friends. I learned how to keep a home clean because of the maids. I learned how to heal anything by myself.

But you're 6 feet under, with no way to help me.

I can't keep blaming you for what happened. I can't blame you for leaving me. I can only blame myself for holding on to some futile hope that you would come back.

So, I made peace with myself. I would slowly detach myself from you, and maybe the next time we see each other, it will be under better circumstances. When I'm happier, healed, and completely over the past.

Caela, My little sister. I think it's ironic that I never got to see you, since I am the moon, and you are the sun. They never see each other. But, I'm sure that you would've been the sun in everyone's life. I think, in a parallel universe, that I would be an overbearing older sister, telling you not to do this and to do that. You would've called me a buzzkill.

I thought about all these things whenever I fell asleep beside my mother after she read to you and me. Her big, round belly always fascinated me. She would tell me that that was how I looked like when I was in her stomach.

I always denied, of course, but I couldn't help but call you "big head" in my head because you were stretching mama out.

I hope you're in a happier place. Away from this cruel world, I hope you found some type of happiness. And I hope you take good care of mama, she needs someone like you to cheer her up.

And explain why I'm doing this to her husband. Even when he was calling her derogatory terms behind my back, I know a part of her still loved him, or rather the person he used to be.

So, those are my last words to you two for a while. Until I find myself. I promise, I'll take good care of myself. I have my husband, my soul sisters, my family in law and my new friends. I know they would all fight for me, like I would for them.

So you can rest in peace. I realized that I'm the ones that never let you rest in peace, because I was hopelessly holding on to the past. But rest now.

Rest, mom and Caela. Until next time.

I drop my pen on the table, and sigh. I couldn't sleep, so I decided to write a letter to my mother. It helped me release so many emotions inside of me, and now I feel liberated, although I just cried a whole year's supply of tears.

But now, I'm hungry.

I quietly step out of the room, and give Leandro a last look, and he's still asleep. I head to the kitchen, and take out the flour and start working on my chocolate chunk cookies. I'm not in the mood to use chocolate chips, and i don't want to cut the chocolate down, so chunks is what i'll do.

I mix everything together, and make sure it's all incorporated as I hum to the Italian song Leandro has been playing in the villa for the past weeks.

I scoop everything out in portion, and put it in the oven. I then hear footsteps, and by the looks of it, it's Leandro.

"Why d'you leave the bed" his cute sleepy voice makes me chuckle

"Wasnt tired"

"You need to sleep. We're going back to Chicago, and we have a meeting fresh off the plane. The court meeting is after tomorrow. You will be exhausted." He says,

"But I wanna stay here" I hug him, and he caresses my back, while putting his chin on my head.

"What if, after all this court scandal, we stay here?"

"For vacation?"

"Forever" We stay silent after that. I think over all the pro's and con's of staying here. I won't get the chance to see Alphonsine as much, all my things are over there, my mother is over there. But if I stay here, I get to grow.

"Let's talk about that another time?"

"No problem, Amorina" I detach myself from him, and take the cookies out of the oven. I put them on a cooling rack, then prepare some milk for the both of us. Once the plate was stacked with cookies, we sat down at the aisle to eat in each other's arms.

Now, this was peace.

The peace I spent so much time looking for.

The next chapter is heavy, but it's quite quick, compared to what I usually read. Be prepared, but I will put some trigger warnings.

I hope you guys liked the letter at the beginning, because I cried slightly writing it. Although we've had some cute moments, it's time to get back to the harsh reality of Lunae and Leandro's world.

Again, we're closing the story in around 7 chapters.

Dioné Valentine, Out!