The Mafia Princess They Threw Away Chapter 08
Sofia forced a laugh.
“What footage? The cameras must’ve malfunctioned.”
Then she looked around.
“Why don’t you bring Elena down here and let her accuse me herself?”
Luca’s expression snapped.
“Sofia!”
She flinched.
“Stop lying.”
That was when she finally got scared.
“I… I saw all that cash in her room. I thought she’d stolen it.”
“I broke the piggy bank, and then I slipped on the pieces myself.”
Mom’s hands slowly curled into fists.
Luca didn’t stop.
“And the cigarette burn?”
Sofia bit her lip.
“She was upset about the locket. I just… burned myself and said she did it.”
Her voice grew defensive.
“It wasn’t even that bad.”
Luca’s eyes turned cold.
“What else?”
“The time you said Elena pushed you down the stairs?”
“The dead rat you said she put in your locker?”
Sofia’s face twisted.
“I did it! All of it!”
“I threw myself down the stairs. I put the rat there.”
She was shouting now.
“I hated her!”
“She disappeared for years, and then she came back and suddenly everyone expected me to make room for her.”
“I wanted her gone!”
Even after saying it, Sofia still looked almost defiant.
She had spent years being forgiven for everything.
She clearly expected this to be no different.
Then she looked at Mom and Dad. And froze.
There was no affection left in their eyes. Only hatred.
“Mom…?”
Slap!
Mom struck her across the face.
“Don’t call me that.”
Her whole body was shaking.
“We raised you. We loved you.”
“And you did this to our daughter?”
Sofia stumbled toward Dad.
“Dad, please. I can explain—”
He stepped away from her.
“Enough.”
That night, Vincent Bellini called in the senior members of the family.
Sofia stood in front of them while he made the announcement himself.
“From this moment on, Sofia has no protection from the Bellini family.”
“She does not speak for us. She does not act in our name.”
“And anyone who gives her shelter after tonight is choosing to stand against me.”
Sofia’s face went pale.
“Dad—”
“Get her out.”
Two men dragged her toward the door.
She screamed and begged all the way out.
No one stopped them.
Five years passed.
Everyone knew that Elena Bellini had disappeared the night Luca Moretti left her in the Iron District.
The Bellinis and the Morettis searched everywhere.
They offered more money than most people would see in a lifetime.
They chased every rumor and every possible sighting.
But they never found me.
Sofia, meanwhile, learned what the Bellini name had once protected her from.
The friends who used to surround her stopped answering her calls.
No one wanted to risk helping someone Vincent Bellini had publicly cast out.
Eventually, she ended up in the same place where Luca had abandoned me.
The Iron District.
She was robbed. Used. Beaten.
Passed from one dangerous crowd to another whenever she owed money she couldn’t repay.
She slept in filthy rooms when she could afford them and wherever she could hide when she couldn’t.
Sometimes, drunk or desperate, she would still tell people,
“I’m Sofia Bellini.”
No one cared.
To them, she was just another woman with no money, no protection, and nowhere left to go.
And the Bellinis never took her back.