The Godfather’s Forsaken Rose Chapter 20
“Bella.”
His voice was hoarse from a sleepless night and raw with tension.
“Let’s talk.”
Isabella turned at the sound.
When she saw him, her brows drew together at once. Her eyes were alert and distant, as if she were looking at an unwelcome intruder.
“Mr. Morello? Why are you here? We have nothing to talk about.”
Her indifference poured over Dominic like ice water.
He stepped forward, almost frantic, and took out his phone to show her the evidence.
“Bella, listen to me. I found out everything Sophia and her family did. I blamed you wrongly. The garden incident, the light fixture at the club, and your mother’s car accident… none of it was simple accident. It was them. I was stupid. I was blind. I let them deceive me.”
Isabella raised a hand and stopped him.
Her eyes were as cold as frozen ground, without a ripple.
“So?”
Dominic froze.
She looked at him, the faintest sarcastic curve touching her lips.
“The truth came out. And then? Dominic, your apology and your regret mean nothing to me.”
She spoke slowly, each word like a dull knife cutting flesh.
“The damage is done. The humiliation when you pushed me away like trash. The pain when you broke my wrist. The despair when I jumped into that cold lake for my mother’s necklace. The suffering after you used your power to have me locked away. None of that disappears just because you finally discovered the truth.”
Her gaze fell on the delicate paper bag in his hand.
She gave a soft, cold laugh.
“You still remember I liked desserts from that shop. How thoughtful of you, Mr. Morello, to have it brought all this way.”
Then she lifted her eyes to his face, which had gone pale.
Her tone was light, but every word was fatal.
“Unfortunately, I stopped liking sweets a long time ago. Too rich. Too cloying.”
With that, she looked away, unlocked the door with her fingerprint, and went inside.
The heavy wooden door closed softly in front of him.
It cut off his sight.
And every humble hope he still had.
Dominic stood frozen where he was, like a stone statue abandoned in the cold wind.
The paper bag in his hand suddenly felt impossibly heavy, as if it held every regret and every useless apology he had left.
Inside the townhouse, Isabella leaned against the cold door and slowly slid to the floor.
Outside, rain began to fall.
It would be a lie to say she felt nothing.
There was still a faint, familiar throb of pain in her chest.
But more than pain, there was relief.
The exhaustion of something finally settling into dust.
Letting go, it turned out, was not as impossible as she had once believed.
She took out her phone. The screen lit with a message Adrian had sent a few minutes earlier.
Are you okay?
Her fingertip paused over the screen.
Then she replied:
I’m okay. It’s over.
Yes.
It was over.
Outside, the rain grew heavier.
Dominic still stood in it, his expensive suit soaked through and clinging to his thin, embarrassed frame.
Rain slid down the hard lines of his face until it was impossible to tell whether there were tears among it.
He looked up at the window that would never open for him again.
His eyes were full of deathly silence and despair.
He knew that what he had lost might never return.