All Chapters of I Survived Seven Years for the Man Who Left Me To Die: Chapter 1 - Chapter 9

I hadn’t expected Santino to show up so soon after Lucia left.I was exhausted enough to fall asleep for a while, and when I woke, I heard his voice coming from the living room. For a few seconds, I thought I had imagined it.Seven years ago, Santino had truly hated me.After he found out I had betrayed him, he waited outside my house for three straight days just to ask me why.I told him I didn’t love him anymore.He stood in the hallway and stared at me for a long time before driving his fist through the glass panel beside him. Blood covered his knuckles, but he never touched me.After that, whenever he saw me nearby, he would turn around and leave. He stopped going to the café we had loved since we were teenagers, and if anyone mentioned my name in front of him, his expression would turn cold.“Don’t talk about Elena around me.”Even on the day he left New York for Sicily, when I went to the airport in the pouring rain just to see him one last time, he only threw the matching ring w

The SUV stopped in front of a private restaurant in Manhattan owned by the Moretti family.Santino got out first. One of the men waiting by the entrance stepped forward to help, but Santino had already opened my door.Before I could say anything, he bent down and lifted me from the seat.For one second, I forgot how to breathe.Seven years had changed him, but being held by him still felt painfully familiar.I kept my hands close to my body, afraid that if I touched him, even by accident, I would remember too much.He set me carefully into the wheelchair, then stepped back at once.Sofia came around the car and slipped her arm through his.“Don’t take it personally,” she said with a small smile. “Santino doesn’t like people touching him. He’s been that way for years.”I lowered my eyes.At least for those few seconds, he had chosen to carry me himself.The restaurant manager personally led us to a private dining room in the back.As soon as we sat down, a server brought the menus. Sant

The doctor confirmed that Sofia and the baby were both fine, but Santino still could not relax.All the way from the restaurant to the hospital, the image of Elena lying on the floor kept returning to him. What bothered him most was the way she had looked at him as he carried Sofia away. Blood was still running down the side of her face, yet she had not called after him or tried to stop him.After Sofia fell asleep, Santino stepped outside the room and called Elena.The first call went unanswered, and so did the ones after that. By the tenth attempt, he finally stopped.Seven years ago, after leaving New York, he had gone to Sicily and taken his place in the Moretti family’s inner circle. During those years, the Bellinis and the Morettis remained closely connected through business, which meant Sofia often appeared at family dinners, negotiations, and private gatherings.She had never hidden the fact that she wanted him, and Santino had turned her down more than once.At one point, Sofi

Marco did not hide anything after that. He told Santino the truth about what had happened seven years ago, why Elena had left him, why she had never gone to Sicily, and what was really behind the engagement announcement that had finally convinced him to let her go.When Marco finished, Santino said nothing for a long time.Everything he had believed for seven years had been built on lies, and Elena was no longer alive to tell him any of it herself.That afternoon, he went to the cemetery.The photograph on Elena’s headstone was still one from when she was young.Santino stood there for hours, remembering the details he had ignored after coming back to New York: the way her clothes hung from her body, the needle marks on her hand, the soup she had barely touched, and the look she had given him while lying on the restaurant floor. By then, she had already been dying, and he had known nothing.For the next several days, Santino spent most of his time at the cemetery. Lucia came once. Sofi