The Godfather’s Forsaken Rose Chapter 02
He said he had never fallen for me.
So for three years, I had been the only fool in a play he had directed, pouring every real feeling I had into a role that meant nothing to him.
I stood frozen, staring at my empty hand. The warmth of his wrist still lingered on my palm, but now it burned like a brand.
The next second, I grabbed the expensive bottle of liquor from the coffee table and smashed it to the floor.
Glasses, fruit plates, decorations. Anything within reach became a casualty of my pain.
No one in the cigar room dared stop me.
I did not know how long it lasted. By the time my strength gave out, my eyes were empty, tear tracks covered my face, and I was still laughing under my breath.
I had no memory of walking out of the underground club.
The night air hit my face, cold against my tears. I wiped at them carelessly and hailed a yellow cab.
“Follow that black Cadillac.”
I wanted to see for myself who she was. The woman he had waited for all these years. The woman I could not compare to.
The driver glanced at me in the mirror, saw something in my face, and wisely asked no questions. He hit the gas.
Dominic, who was always calm behind the wheel, was driving faster than usual.
Was he that eager to see her?
His car stopped at the arrivals level of JFK.
I paid the fare, stumbled out, and hid behind a pillar.
Dominic stood near the exit. A woman in a white dress came through with a suitcase, graceful and fragile-looking.
When I saw her face, I felt the world split open.
It was not only because Dominic opened his arms when she rushed toward him, caught her steadily, and lowered his head to kiss her hair with a tenderness he had never shown me.
It was because the woman he held so carefully was Sophia Moretti.
My so-called sister.
The person I hated most in this life. The person I wanted least to be connected to.
Back then, less than six months after my mother died in a car accident, my father brought another woman into our home. That woman brought a daughter three years older than me. Sophia.
My father said that woman had been his first love. Sophia was his biological daughter. He claimed that if my mother had not “forced” him into marriage, he would never have left his pregnant first love.
What a joke.
I knew the truth better than anyone.
My father had been desperate then. He needed money to expand his territory and could barely keep himself afloat. He was the one who approached my mother, who had loved him for years, and promised to marry her if her family backed him.
My mother gave him money. She gave him all her love. In the end, she even gave her life, pushing him out of the way during that fatal crash.
And what did he do?
Before her body had gone cold, he used her assets and inheritance as bargaining chips to marry his so-called first love in grand style.
Dominic could have loved anyone.
Why did it have to be Sophia?
I bit my lower lip until I tasted blood.
By the time I came back to myself, Dominic had already taken Sophia’s suitcase and was guiding her toward the parking lot with a hand at her waist.
As if possessed, I hailed another cab and followed them again.
We were close enough that I could see into the car ahead. Dominic turned toward Sophia and spoke to her softly. Then he reached out and brushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
That kind of careful tenderness was something I had never received in three years.
My heart felt as if it had been thrown under a millstone and ground again and again. The pain made it hard to breathe.
I was staring at the car ahead through a blur of tears when everything at the intersection suddenly went wrong.
Brakes screamed.
Metal crashed.
The taxi I was in slammed into the car in front of us, and a second later another vehicle rammed into us from behind.
Bang.
The impact hurled me forward. My forehead struck the back of the front seat. Pain exploded, and warm liquid ran down into my eyes.
Through the chaos, screams, and shattered glass, I saw the door of Dominic’s Cadillac open.
Dominic got out first. He hurried to the passenger side and carefully lifted Sophia from the car.
He held her, checking her injuries with a tight frown and a face full of concern.
Then he turned to leave the accident scene with Sophia in his arms, and for one brief second, his eyes met mine.
I was trapped in the crushed back seat of the taxi, bleeding and unable to move.
For the first time, I saw shock flash across his always-calm eyes.
But it vanished almost immediately.
Sophia seemed to sense his hesitation. In a soft, fragile voice, she said, “Dominic, what is it? Did you see someone you know? I’m fine. It’s only a scratch. If someone you know is there, you should check on them. I heard one of the taxis was hit badly…”
Dominic was silent for a few seconds.
Then he looked away.
“No one I know.”
“Just strangers.”
With that, he carried Sophia away from the wreckage without looking back.
I watched his retreating figure and wanted to laugh, but tears slid down my face, mixing with blood.
Strangers.
So that was what I had been to him all along.