✔️ DOLORE | 18 +

Chapter 19

NEXT DAY

Calina's pov

I was sitting on the bed, staring blankly at the wall in front of me as the door opened and two maids came in. I looked at them both while they stared at me in shock. My physical condition probably frightened them.

"Put the clothes on the bed, Leah and wait outside," the older woman instructed the younger one. "Okay, mom," she muttered before laying the clothes on the bed, as she was told, and leaving the room.

I looked at them envyingly. I always envied a mother and daughter relationship, which was normal I guess, as people always envied things in life they couldn't have.

I always thought that the only person who might love me unconditionally in this life was gonna be my mother, but she died before I got to know her.

I wondered what I had done wrong in life. What was my fault that life turned out cruel to me the moment I opened my eyes?

I asked myself since I was a child: Why did life take my mother from me before I even had a chance to meet her? Why couldn't my father love me? Why couldn't he love me as he loved my brothers? What was wrong with me?

I felt dead for seventeen years of my life. Then, I had a chance to taste life for five years before everything was snatched from me again, my freedom, my laugh, my voice, and I was thrown into the same misery I ended five years ago.

Though there was one difference: My captor wasn't my family, making me submit to them by binding me to their traditions and life-style but it was the Italian mobster I escaped years ago by taking an innocent orphan girl's identity.

Maybe that was my karma? I may deserved all of this. After all, I was partly to be blamed that two people died, just for me and my selfish desires. Now, I was probably paying the price for William's and my actions five years ago.

I came back from my thoughts as I felt someone shake me. I jumped back, looking to my right.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you. You were just lost and didn't react when I talked to you," she said as I only looked at her.

She looked at me with pity, even empathy. Sitting next to me, she rubbed my arm, before hugging me, asking, "Are you alright?"

Sighing, I leaned into her hug, before my entire body stopped mid-tracks as I reminded what Adrian had told me when we were sitting on the rooftop of the mansion on a late summer night, eating ice cream:

THE PAST
🖤

"Fuck!" I giggled before he pulled his hand over my mouth, pulling me with him away from the edge of the rooftop, making us blend with the night, as my ice cream dripped on the bodyguard's head.

I wouldn't be able to hold on my laughter, if it wasn't for his hand keeping me quiet, as the man below us wiped the ice cream from his head, cursing, thinking a bird shit on his head.

"I think he's gone," William sighed, pulling his hand away, looking at me seriously, "you have to be more careful, Calina! If your father catches us hanging around, especially in the middle of the night, he'll have my head, and lock you up for the rest of your life!"

"No, I'm good," I smiled at him relaxed. "Don't be bold," he sighed, shaking his head. "I'm not," I muttered, putting my head on his shoulder, "I am just not afraid, because I know you'd save me if the situation escalated the way you just described it."

"Well, I can't save you if he beheads me, now can I?" he asked me, huffing. "I don't think so, but I trust you with my life, Adrian. I know you would find a way to save us," I mumbled honestly.