The Mafia Princess They Threw Away Chapter 09
Five years after I disappeared, my parents had aged beyond recognition.
Luca had changed too.
The news was showing another supposed sighting of Elena Bellini.
Mom and Dad had rushed across the country to see the girl.
Luca went with them.
The camera caught the moment they realized, once again, that she wasn’t me.
I pointed at the screen.
“Adrian.”
“Those are my parents, aren’t they?”
Adrian Valenti looked at me.
Then he nodded：“Yes.”
“The treatment must be working. You’re remembering more.”
I looked back at the screen.
Over the past few nights, pieces of my old life had started coming back.
The broken piggy bank.
My journal.
The cigarette burning into my arm.
The rain.
And the car disappearing into the night.
Adrian was quiet for a moment.
“Do you want to see them?”
“Your parents… Luca… they’ve been looking for you for five years.”
I shook my head.
“No.”
“What would be the point?”
I could already imagine it.
Mom and Dad crying as they held me, saying they were sorry.
Promising they would never choose Sofia over me again.
Luca standing in front of me with red eyes, telling me he’d made a mistake.
Begging me to forgive him.
I had imagined those things so many times before.
Back when I still wanted them.
But now?
What could any of it change?
I looked down at the scar on my arm.
The burn had faded over the years, but it had never disappeared.
Neither had the marks on my back.
They reminded me of exactly how little I had meant to them when I was still there.
“I don’t know if they love me now,” I said quietly.
“Or if they just can’t live with what they did.”
I looked at Adrian.
“But it doesn’t matter anymore.”
Five years ago, Adrian’s people had found me in the Iron District.
By then, I was soaked through, bleeding, and barely able to remember my own name.
He got me out of the country and took me to Switzerland for treatment.
The surgery helped.
So did the years that followed.
My memory came back slowly.
Not everything. But enough.
More importantly, I built a life that didn’t depend on remembering who Elena Bellini had once been.
I reached for Adrian’s hand.
“Thank you.”
He squeezed my fingers.
“You never have to thank me for that.”
We were living in the south of France now.
Far from New York.
Far from the Bellinis.
Far from the Iron District.
And I had no intention of going back.
The Bellinis eventually placed a memorial stone for me in the family cemetery.
There was no date of death on it.
Mom visited constantly.
Dad refused to let anyone call it a grave.
“My daughter isn’t dead,” he would say.
But they still left flowers there.
As for Luca—
he had my name tattooed along the inside of his forearm.
ELENA.
Every year on the anniversary of the night I disappeared, he locked himself in his study and drank until he could barely stand.
He never married.
They kept looking for Elena Bellini.
But Elena Bellini was gone.
I had changed my name years ago.
Renée. A name for someone born again.
One spring afternoon, Adrian called to me from the garden.
“Ren?”
I turned toward him immediately.
For once, I knew exactly who he was.
And I knew exactly who I was.
I smiled and walked into the sunlight.
Don’t look for me anymore.
I’m no longer the mafia princess they threw away.
And I learned how to live again.