Library

Search

Home / Mafia Short Story / He Taught Me to Obey, So I Learned to Leave / Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

All Chapters of He Taught Me to Obey, So I Learned to Leave: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

11 Chapters

Chapter 1

By the time Lucien brought me back to Varelli House, the place had already rearranged itself around Celeste.She was standing in his private morning room when the butler opened the doors for us, damp-haired and barefoot, a dark cashmere robe belted loosely over a silk slip. One of Lucien’s robes. She turned when she heard us and gave me that same careful look she had always worn around me, pity softened into manners.How was St. Dymphna, Serena?“If you hadn’t cut Lucien off from the secure line that night, the doctors would have reached me sooner. He never would have had to send you away if you hadn’t forced his hand.”Five years ago, I would have crossed the room and clawed her face.Now I stayed still.Lucien looked from her to me, and whatever he saw in my face seemed to irritate him at once.“Posture.”The word barely left his mouth before my body obeyed. Shoulders back. Chin level. Feet aligned. Hands settled neatly at my waist.The movement was automatic.Lucien stopped.At St.

Chapter 2

When I first married Lucien, I once ate a pistachio truffle without knowing what was in it.My throat began to close before I finished chewing. He spent the night beside my bed, furious with the kitchen, the doctor, and himself. After that, pistachios vanished from the house.So when dessert was set in front of me that night, I noticed it at once.A small green-glazed cake. Pistachio cream. Crushed nuts at the edge.Celeste looked at it and blinked.“Oh,” she said lightly. “I thought she’d asked for it.”Lucien did not even look up. He was pouring Matteo water.“If you asked for it,” he said, “eat it.”I picked up my fork.At St. Dymphna, refusal was never treated as preference. If I pushed away a plate, they wrote me up for defiance. If I left food untouched, I lost heat, sleep, or the next meal. If I argued, they called it resistance and began the evening again from the start.So I stopped refusing.I took a bite.Then another.The taste turned bitter almost at once. My mouth began t

Chapter 3

Lucien stood very still for a moment.Then he turned to the majordomo and said, “Call St. Dymphna. Tell them I may be sending someone back tonight.”The room went cold around me.He did not have to say anything else. The name alone was enough. My body knew it before my mind did“No,” I said.Lucien looked at me.I crossed the room too fast, caught his sleeve with both hands, and heard my own voice go thin and ragged.“Please. Don’t send me back.”He said nothing.“I was careless. I frightened the child. I spoke out of turn. It won’t happen again.”Every word came easily. That was the worst of it.You learn, after long enough, that confession is just another posture. One that sometimes makes the punishment shorter.Lucien’s expression changed, but not into mercy.At last he pulled his sleeve from my hands.“Go to the blue sitting room,” he said. “And stay there until I decide what to do with you.”He took Matteo upstairs himself.I went where I was told.The blue sitting room was empty

Chapter 4

The family physician left a little after midnight.He had cleaned the blood from Celeste’s temple and secured the cut with two narrow strips. Before stepping out, he gave Lucien the kind of reassurance men like him were paid to deliver.“It looks worse than it is,” he said, closing his case. “She needs rest, not a hospital.”Lucien walked him to the door himself.When he came back, the room had settled into a soft, expensive quiet. Lucien stopped near the fireplace but did not sit.“She’s getting worse,” he said at last.Celeste lowered her eyes.“Please don’t be angry.”His mouth tightened. “She put her hands on you.”“I shouldn’t have spoken to her when she was already upset.”He gave a short laugh with no warmth in it.“You’re still protecting her.”“I’m trying not to make things worse.”That only seemed to harden something in him.“She terrified Matteo.”Celeste was quiet for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice was soft and careful, the voice of a woman trying not to ask for

Chapter 5

Celeste recovered quickly.That Sunday, Lucien brought her to the family estate for supper.He did not try to hide it. He brought her through the front of the house, where the staff would see her, where his mother would see her, where no one would need an explanation.By the time they sat down, his mother had already made up her mind about the evening.She passed Celeste a bowl of broth with her own hands and told her she looked pale.“You need looking after,” she said.Celeste smiled the way she always did when she wanted to seem harmless.“You’re very kind.”His mother touched her wrist lightly.“You’ve given this family enough already.”Lucien sat across from them and said nothing.The table was set with old silver, long-stemmed glasses, and the kind of polished restraint that had ruled this house long before he was born. His mother asked after Matteo, after Celeste’s sleep, after whether the house staff had been attentive enough. It all sounded gentle. None of it was accidental.Ye

Chapter 6

The woman from St. Dymphna was still speaking.“Mr. Varelli, as I said, Miss Serena was never readmitted. We expected to hear from your office the next morning regarding further arrangements, but no one contacted us...”Lucien stopped hearing the rest.For a few seconds he stood in the middle of the study with the phone still at his ear, looking at nothing.She had not gone back.That was impossible.He had watched her leave the house. He had watched her stumble once on the front path, catch herself, and keep walking. For five days he had assumed St. Dymphna had her again. He had even been waiting for the call, waiting to hear that she was refusing food, demanding to see him, making trouble.No call had come.He had thought that meant obedience.Now he knew better.Behind him, Celeste’s voice broke into the silence.“Lucien?”She had come looking for him. He could hear it in the softness she put into his name, the caution, the concern already arranged on her face before she stepped ful

Chapter 7

I didn’t die.When I opened my eyes, I was staring at a stained ceiling, listening to a radio murmuring somewhere below me.A woman stepped into view with a bowl of soup in her hands. She looked about thirty-five, dark hair pinned up carelessly, sleeves rolled, apron still on as though she had only stepped away from work.When she saw I was awake, she set the bowl down beside the bed.“Well,” she said, “you decided to stay.”I tried to sit up and nearly fell back. She put a hand on my shoulder.“Easy. You swallowed enough harbor water to drown twice.”“My partner pulled you out from under the loading pier,” she said. “You got caught on the chains.”A broad-shouldered man passed the half-open door, glanced in, and kept walking.The woman handed me the bowl.“Soup first.”A few spoonfuls in, she asked, “Want me to call anyone?”I nearly dropped the bowl.“No.”The word came out too fast.“No. Please.”“Okay,” she said.That was all.Later I learned her name was Rosa. The man downstairs w

Chapter 8

I stayed.Not because I trusted survival yet, but because Rosa and Emil made it harder to leave than to remain.A week after they pulled me from the harbor, Rosa moved me out of the storeroom and into the narrow flat above the lunch counter. Emil said nothing, but the next morning there was a proper lock on the door and a second blanket folded at the foot of the bed.After that, life shrank into practical things.I chopped onions. Kept the till. Learned which ferry crews wanted coffee black and which ones wanted it sweet enough to strip paint. Emil showed me how to clean the grill without burning myself again. Rosa started leaving supplier lists where I could see them, then asking what should be reordered first as if my opinion cost her nothing.By the end of the month, she cleared a section of the counter for me and let me add something new to the lunch board.Savory hand pies.Potatoes, onions, whatever meat had come in cheap that morning, folded into pastry and baked until the crust

Chapter 9

By morning, Lucien had watched enough.Enough to know St. Dymphna had never been discipline. Enough to know Serena had not gone back there afraid of strangers, but afraid of him. Enough to know that whatever had happened to her in those rooms, he had paid for it, permitted it, and called it necessary.When Moretti arrived with the financial file, Lucien was still in the same chair.Transfers. Retainers. Quiet payments made through foundations and shell accounts. Enough to draw a clear line from Celeste to St. Dymphna without anyone ever having to write the truth in plain language.Lucien closed the folder.“Where is she?”“At the riverside apartment,” Moretti said. “She’s been packing since dawn.”Lucien drove there himself.The front door was unlocked. Two suitcases stood in the hall. Jewelry cases and passports were spread across the dining table.Celeste came out of the bedroom carrying one of Matteo’s coats and stopped when she saw him.For a second, her face emptied.Then the expr

Chapter 10

By the time the harbor lamps came on, I was wiping down the counter and counting what was left in the till.Rosa was downstairs arguing with a fish supplier over a missing invoice. Emil was outside folding the awning in before the rain came again. The windows were wet, and the whole shop smelled of oil, salt, and coffee grounds.I turned to stack the cups and saw Lucien through the glass.He was standing just beyond the door, coat dark with rain, face thinner than I remembered. He looked as if he had been living on cigarettes and bad sleep.For a second I couldn’t move.Rosa followed my eyes, saw him, and came to stand beside me.Lucien opened the door only when neither of us did.The bell gave a flat little ring.He stepped inside and looked at me as though he still couldn’t believe I was there.“Serena.”My hand tightened on the cup. I set it down before I dropped it.Rosa didn’t move.“She doesn’t know you,” she said.Lucien’s eyes stayed on me.“She does.”I found my voice.“My nam

PREV

NEXT

SCAN CODE TO READ ON APP

DMCA.com Protection Status