My Guardian Married My Sister But I’m His Alpha Chapter 11
Chiara didn’t look at her.
Her gaze went past Francesca to the man standing behind her.
Griffin wore the black formal attire of the acting Alpha. He wore no family insignia, only the crest of the Nightfall Pack.
He met her eyes from a distance. There was a world of unspoken things in that one look.
But he turned away quickly.
Chiara calmly looked away, too.
At the appointed time, the memorial began.
Chiara knelt in the front row, the priest’s prayers washing over her.
Her mother began to cry.
Francesca was crying, too. She leaned against Griffin’s shoulder, and he quietly handed her a handkerchief.
Only Chiara didn’t cry.
Instead, her mind drifted back.
Because Francesca was fragile, their mother remembered every detail of her meals, her medicine, her healer’s appointments.
Chiara had been the child no one watched.
At three, she fed herself.
At five, she walked herself to school.
At seven, she ran a fever of 102 degrees and rummaged through the medicine cabinet on her own, trying to find something to bring it down.
When their mother found out, she’d only said, “Don’t take medicine without asking,” before turning to bring Francesca a bowl of chicken soup.
Chiara had always told herself she didn’t blame her mother.
Because she’d had her father.
He was the Alpha of Nightfall Pack and the head of the Moretti family’s business interests, always flying from one city to the next.
But no matter how busy he was, he never missed the important moments.
In third grade, when their mother stayed home with a sick Francesca, it was her father who sat in the audience, filming her entire school play.
At her middle school graduation, Francesca came down with a sudden illness, and their mother forgot Chiara was giving the salutatorian speech. Her father canceled a meeting and rushed back just to sit in the front row.
He always remembered the dates of her school events.
He remembered that she hated cilantro.
He remembered her favorite singer.
On her twentieth birthday, he was away on business, but he took the first red-eye back to New York just to wish her a happy birthday in person when she woke up.
He had been standing in the doorway, taking off his shoes, the exhaustion plain on his face.
When Chiara threw her arms around him, he’d laughed, holding up the breakfast he’d brought. “Easy. You’ll spill the coffee. Your wolf is already fast enough as it is.”
That was the last birthday gift she ever received from him.
After that, she didn’t have a father anymore.