Chapter 4: She is gone forever

Riella’s POV

I buried my mother next to the man who got her killed.

The ropes creaked as Don Aurelio’s coffin sank into the ground, inch by inch, until the dark hole swallowed it. Right beside his grave, my mum’s box was already down there. Lid closed. Face gone. Hands gone. Just wood and earth and a pain in my chest that felt like someone had reached in and squeezed.

They were being buried on the grounds of his mansion. Behind the big house. Near the rose garden she used to walk through in the mornings, pretending this life was safe.

The preacher talked about rest and God and peace.

None of it felt true.

Flashes of that day kept hitting me while he spoke.

The man bursting into my room. The smear on his collar that looked like blood. His pale face. The way he wouldn’t look at me when I asked if she was alive.

Then the hospital.

The bright lights. The smell of disinfectant. The doctor’s mouth moving.

They didn’t make it.

I’m sorry.

I had collapsed on the cold floor. The sound I made didn’t even sound like me. After that, everything went blurry. People talking over me. Hands lifting me. A blanket around my shoulders. I don’t remember much more.

I have been like a ghost since that day.

My mum was gone forever, and I still couldn’t accept it.

Even standing in front of her grave, it felt unreal. Maybe I would wake up. Maybe I would walk downstairs and find her in the kitchen in that silk robe, making coffee, laughing too loud the way she did when she wanted Don Aurelio to think she was happy.

She had finally gotten her dream life.

And it had cost her everything.

I knew they died because Don Aurelio had been a dangerous man. Men like him didn’t get old in peace. Someone always came for them. I just never thought the someone would come for her too.

The wind moved through the trees. A few of the men stood in a tight line behind us, black suits, hands folded, faces empty. No one cried. Not really. Not the way people cry when they lose someone they love.

My eyes travelled to Lorenzo.

He stood on the other side of the graves, a little apart from everyone. He was staring at his father’s coffin with a hard expression on his face. His jaw was tight. His eyes were cold and dangerous. He didn’t blink much. He didn’t look at the preacher. He just watched the box go down like he was memorizing it.

I looked away quickly before he could catch me staring.

I now knew how dangerous he was.

He had been coming back to the mansion covered in blood from the first night after our parents died. I saw him once from the upstairs window. Shirt dark. Hands dark red. A look on his face that didn’t belong to a man who had just lost his father. The next mornings the news showed bodies. Men left in alleys and warehouses. Tortured. Cut. Dumped where people would find them.

I believed those bodies were Lorenzo taking revenge.

Not grief. Not mourning. Payment. One life for another, taken in the ugliest way he could think of. Every time I closed my eyes I saw him walking through the front doors with blood on his shirt and that same cold face he wore now, standing over his father’s grave like the dead still owed him something.

The preacher finished. Someone said amen. A few of the men crossed themselves. Then the first handful of dirt hit my mother’s coffin. The sound was soft and final. Another handful. Then another.

I didn’t move.

Lorenzo’s voice cut through the quiet, cold and flat.

“It’s done. You all can leave.”

No one argued. The line of black suits broke apart at once. Shoes moved over the grass. Whispers faded. The preacher closed his book and walked toward the house without looking at either of us. In less than a minute, the garden was empty except for the two open graves, the smell of wet earth, and us.

Just Lorenzo and me.

He stood a few steps away, hands in his pockets, staring at the dirt the same way he had stared at his father’s coffin. Like it was a job that had been finished.

“They’re gone forever,” he said. His voice was still cold. No softness in it. No comfort. “Standing here with them won’t bring them back.”

I didn’t answer him.

I just kept staring as more dirt covered my mother’s coffin. The sound of it landing made my stomach twist. Every handful hid her a little more. 

Lorenzo waited a second longer, like he expected me to say something. Cry. Argue. Ask him what happened next.

I didn’t.

He didn’t wait for me. He walked toward the mansion without looking back. His shoulders were straight. His steps were steady. Like this was just another afternoon and two people in the ground behind him didn’t change a thing.

I don’t know how long I stood in front of her grave.

The wind moved through the roses. Dirt slid down the sides of the hole and whispered as it fell. My hands stayed clenched at my sides until my fingers ached.

My mother was gone.

There was nothing keeping me here now. Not the house. Not the diamond she used to wear. Not Don Aurelio’s name. Not the life she thought she had finally won.

The last thing she had told me was to stay away from Lorenzo.

Don’t look at him. Don’t talk to him. Don’t give him a reason to notice you.

I could still feel her nails in my arm when she said it.

I wiped my face with the back of my hand and looked at the grave one last time.

I was going to leave.

There was nothing left for me here. Just a stepbrother who hated me.