To make the biological daughter he’d only just found feel at home, my father personally carved my Core from my body. Then my fiancé beat me thirty times with a belt.
They told me if I called off the engagement, it would all be over.
Later, they staged an elaborate charade to make me believe our family was destroyed, all to force me to break.
That night, my grandmother, my mother, my two sisters-in-law, and my five-year-old niece all died.
Before they pushed open the chapel doors, the last thing they said was, “It’s only one night. How bad can it be?”
The doors opened.
My grandmother sat peacefully on the pew, her chest still. My mother and both my sisters-in-law were gone. My niece lay in my arms, her small body already cold.
I was wearing a wedding dress, with blood still crusted at the corner of my mouth.
By the time the sun rose, every woman in the Romano family was dead.
Make Them Regret It Chapter 44 In the fifth year, I returned to New York. The estate was the same, but the guards at the gate no longer recognized me. Lighthouse had grown to twice the size it was when I left. The walls were still low. Every door could still be pushed open from
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Make Them Regret It Chapter 43 I went to Florida first. The setting sun turned the sea to gold as seabirds wheeled up from the palm trees. I stayed with my grandmother in Boston for a month, tending her garden and dusting my mother’s urn. After that, I went to the cherry orchard in Michigan
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Make Them Regret It Chapter 42 They had spent over a month guarding the chapel and had grown gaunt. “Miss Blythe,” one of them said, dropping to his knees. “We’ve confessed our crimes to the council. Our sentence has been passed. We’re not allowed to leave the chapel grounds for the rest of our lives.”
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Make Them Regret It Chapter 41 Before I left, I went up the back hill one last time. All five graves were neatly tended. The roses beside my grandmother’s grave were in full bloom. In front of my older brother’s wife’s grave sat a small bottle of freshly made cherry wine. Beside my second brother’s
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Make Them Regret It Chapter 40 In the study, I put in small desks, sized for children. The first child to live there was six years old. Every time she held a pen, she got ink all over her face. I taught her how to write her name. When she finished, her letters all crooked
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Make Them Regret It Chapter 39 When the list of compensated assets was delivered to me, I kept none of it. I used the funds to buy an abandoned old house far outside the estate district. It was a long way from Romano Manor. When you pushed open the windows, sunlight poured in. I hung
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Make Them Regret It Chapter 38 “Isabella, I gave you a home.” “And I helped you destroy it.” Isabella collapsed on the floor, laughing one moment and sobbing the next. She turned and cursed my brothers, cursed Colton, and finally, cursed me. No one tried to soothe her. The flogging was carried out on the
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Make Them Regret It Chapter 37 The family council’s ruling came three days later. The stolen document conviction was formally vacated. In the record book, the charge under my name was struck out in front of everyone. The legal adviser was removed from office and sent into seclusion for reflection. My father, for forcibly removing
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Make Them Regret It Chapter 36 “They spoiled me. They gave me anything I wanted. I said Blythe was in my way, so they took her Core, they beat her, they locked people up for me.” “So why am I the only one being punished?” At last, she asked the question she had been building
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Make Them Regret It Chapter 35 On the day the family council convened, the first person brought forward was Isabella. She wore the tracking bracelet from the mining district, her half-white hair a tangled curtain over her shoulder. When she saw my father and brothers standing in the defendants’ dock, she froze, then laughed out
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