Equally Ungrateful: Like Father, Like Daughter

I returned to the sitting room, but the chill clinging to my body refused to fade.

They called a doctor to stitch me up. Blood still poured from my ankle, and when I stood, the hem of my white gown was already soaked red. The stain bloomed across the fabric like a wound that wouldn't close.

Then Sofia Moretti lunged at me and sank her teeth into my arm.

After she'd had her fill of biting me, she pulled back and looked at me like I was nothing.

"What gives you the right to wear Mamma's dress?" she hissed. "Why didn't you just drown?"

Her eyes were bloodshot, and traces of my blood still clung to her lips and teeth. She looked like she wanted to tear me apart.

Suppressing a frown, I asked as calmly as I could, "Sofia, didn't you lock all of your Madre's dresses away?"

The color drained from her face. I had exposed her lie.

She slapped me hard, then burst into tears and ran off.

Years ago, Sofia had declared that I was filthy and unworthy of touching anything that had belonged to Donna Lucia Ferrari. She had even cleared out an entire room just to store those belongings.

After seven years, I was long past being surprised by tricks like this.

Once she was gone, I had my wounds tended to and went home.

As soon as I stepped through the door, I stopped dead.

Dust drifted through the air. In the middle of the living room, Mamma's memorial portrait and her urn had been smashed into pieces.

My heart skipped a beat.

Sofia stood at the top of the staircase. When she saw the horror on my face, she clapped her hands and burst out laughing.

"Scared now?" she crowed. "I don't have a Madre, so yours doesn't get to rest in peace either. That unholy mess doesn't belong in my house."

She ground her heel through Mamma's ashes before kicking the shattered portrait across the floor.

My lungs seized. The pain carved through my chest like a knife, stealing every word before it could leave my throat.

Before the Morettis, Mamma and I had only had each other in Las Amelios.

When I got a job here, I brought her out to live with me. Then she passed away.

Vittorio had agreed to let me keep her ashes in the house for the time being, so I'd locked the urn in my wardrobe, terrified someone might disturb her rest.

For seven years, it stayed there.

Now, Sofia had scattered them across the floor like they were nothing but a joke to her.

My vision blurred as tears welled in my eyes. Just as I rushed forward to stop her, Vittorio stepped through the front door.

His gaze was deep and unreadable, and his expression was icy. He looked so much like his daughter in that moment—same cold eyes, same unfeeling face, same cruelty hidden beneath composure.

He called her name softly, and Sofia immediately threw herself into his arms, sobbing as she poured out her complaints.

Holding his daughter, he spared me a brief glance.

"Did you get that injury looked at?"

I couldn't find my voice. The ache in my chest was suffocating, and all I could manage was a small nod.

His eyes dropped to the bandaged wound around my ankle. For a moment, his lips parted as if he were about to say something. But Sofia pressed against him, and whatever words he'd intended to speak died before they could leave his mouth.

He gently said, "Don't wear clothes that aren't yours again."

After that, he gestured for the housekeeper to take Sofia away.

I said nothing. I kneeled on the floor and scraped Mamma's ashes out of the tile cracks with my fingertips, while tears poured down my face.

Vittorio didn't like my silence.

He glanced at the devastation scattered across the floor, and his expression cooled into that distant, unreadable mask I had grown to dread.

"You should have dealt with this a long time ago," he said flatly. "Next time, clean up your own belongings sooner. Keeping them in the house all these years only breeds misery."

His words landed like a death sentence, carving into me deeper than any wound.

A tear splashed onto the back of my hand, and the pain in my chest only grew worse.

More than once, I'd asked to return to Las Amelios so I could lay Mamma to rest properly.

He always brushed me off.

He would only say calmly, "Sofia's still young. She needs you. Leave the ashes here for now. Give it some time, and I'll find a cemetery for your Madre. I'll take care of it. You just focus on looking after Sofia."

That "give it some time" stretched into seven years.

For seven years, I devoted myself wholeheartedly to them. I memorized every preference they had, every habit, every taboo, and bent over backward to accommodate them.

Yet I never found a place in their hearts.

In the end, I couldn't even protect Mamma's memorial portrait.