Chapter 3

I went back to my room and started packing.

There was no need to wait three days. That slap had made everything clear. There was no place for me in the Colobo family anymore. Instead of waiting for them to throw me out, I would leave on my own terms.

I sorted through my things one by one.

There was almost nothing.

After Sophia arrived, my father and brother had barely bought me anything. My allowance was gone. My birthday gifts stopped. Even my name had been pushed to the bottom of the family trust. I had not really lived in this house for a long time.

In a way, it made leaving easier.

My eyes landed on a photo on the desk.

The three of us stood in front of the old Colobo estate, my father, my brother, and me. Back then, I believed carrying the Colobo name meant something.

The memories came back all at once.

Two years ago, I almost left for Australia.

A research institute had invited me to join a long-term project. The base was remote, the work confidential, and once I entered, contact with the outside world would be limited. It was the kind of opportunity people spent years trying to earn.

I wanted to go.

But my father refused almost immediately. He said Australia was too far, the project was too long, and the Colobo family could not have its daughter vanish for years with barely any contact.

Marco reacted even more strongly.

Back then, he had clung to me harder than anyone.

He showed up outside my room that night and stood there for a long time without saying anything. When I opened the door, his eyes were red.

“Bella,” he said, his voice hoarse, “if you go that far away and I can’t even call you when I need you, I’ll go insane.”

He held my hand so tightly that my fingers hurt.

I was still soft-hearted then.

So I stayed.

When I was young, I was often sick. No matter how busy my father was, the moment my brother said I was ill, he would drop everything and come home. Those were the years the Colobo family was fighting for territory across the East Coast, yet he still chose me first. People under him used to say that I was the one thing he valued most.

When I was thirteen, men from a rival family slipped into my school. They would not touch the Colobo heir, but they had no problem going after me.

After class, they cornered me in the parking lot. They pinned me to the ground and burned my arm with a cigarette, saying it was a message for the Colobo family.

My brother arrived soon after. He was only sixteen, but he had already begun handling family matters. He took them down one by one and was beaten badly in the process, his face covered in blood. In the end, he slammed the leader against the hood of a car and pressed a shard of glass to his throat.

“Touch her again,” he said, “and I’ll wipe out your entire family.”

After that, everyone on the East Coast knew that Marco Colobo would turn into a mad dog for his sister.

No one was allowed to touch Isabella.

Luca had been good to me too. When my father was away, he would take my brother and me to the Rizzo estate on weekends. We felt awkward going so often, but he would just smile at me, his eyes bright under the chandeliers, and say it didn’t matter. The Rizzos and the Colobos were allies for life. We could come as often as we wanted.

Back then, I believed him.

So on my seventeenth birthday, when my father asked if I would agree to a marriage alliance with the Rizzo family, I said yes without hesitation. I even thought nothing would really change. Luca’s estate was right next door. The Colobos and the Rizzos would always be tied together.

The next day, my father brought home a girl.

Sophia was the daughter of his old friend.

Years ago, during a failed negotiation on the East Coast, that man had taken a bullet meant for my father and saved his life.

From the moment Sophia stepped into our house, everything changed.

She always appeared at the exact moment when I was alone with my brother or Luca. She broke my jewelry, then showed them her cut hand and said I had pushed her.

She spilled the wine my brother poured for her over her own dress, her eyes red as she said she did not blame me and knew I hadn’t meant it.

She snapped the bracelet my father had just bought her, then apologized to me and begged me not to treat her that way. She said I was a Colobo and she had nothing, that she would never take anything from me.

She poured coffee over herself, cut lines into her own arm with broken glass, and ran into Luca’s arms in tears. She begged him to talk to me, said she could leave if that was what I wanted, just please don’t let me turn the family against her.

Her tricks drove me to the edge.

That day, I finally broke. I laid everything she had done out in front of them, piece by piece. I thought that this time, my father and brother would finally see the truth.

They didn’t.

My father looked at me with nothing but disappointment. He said he never thought I would turn out like this, that I had brought shame to the family, and that the Colobos did not need a daughter like me.

My brother struck me across the face. He asked how I could treat Sophia like that, whether I had forgotten what it felt like to be bullied, and said I was no different from those people. Then he told me to get out.

Luca held Sophia carefully in his arms. The eyes that used to look only at me belonged to someone else now. He said he needed to reconsider the marriage and that he did not want to be involved in the Colobo family’s affairs anymore.

They took Sophia to a private clinic.

Just like today.

After that, no one in the Colobo family ever called me Miss Colobo again.

Now they call Sophia that.

As for me, even carrying the Colobo name feels like a joke.