Until Her - Ami Van Page 0,83

her breathing and control her trembling hands.

Stella smiles at her and she nods for Stella to continue. Stella’s right. She’s come this far and there’s no going back. Only forward.

“Pietro Romano had an ongoing affair with your mother,” Stella continues. “I can’t tell you if he ever loved her but I know that he loved his wife, Isabella and Cristian’s mother. He loved her very much.”

“She died right after I was born,” she tells Stella. “I think it happened before my first birthday.”

“Yes,” Stella replies. “I’m not one hundred positive because there are no medical records but from what I did find, I think Maribel Romano was suffering from post-partum depression after Cristian was born. Things between her and Pietro were rocky. Some people can and have sworn to it, Ari. I think it might be why he started the affair with your mother.”

She nods not because she’s accepted this assumption but because it’s a possibility.

“Maribel must have found out about the affair when your mother became pregnant with you,” Stella continues. “Ari,” Stella says and she can tell that her friend was giving her a warning of what’s to come next.

“Maribel committed suicide. She hung herself a week before your first birthday. Isabella and Pietro found her. Isabella would have only been a little girl at the time but she was old enough to remember.”

She clamps both of her hands over her mouth to hold back the sobs. Her tears couldn’t be held back though.

“Pietro Romano blamed my mother for his wife’s death and hated me because I was proof of his infidelity,” she sobs out when she can speak again.

“I’m so sorry,” Stella tells her. “But the sins of the father aren’t supposed to fall upon the children. Two wrongs don’t make a right. He made your life a living hell because he fucked up and he taught his children to hate you too. He always had the choice to change things. Maybe not with your mother but between you and your brother and sister, he could have made a difference. Yet, he perpetuated the hate.”

The weakness in her sympathizes with Isabella now.

Her own mother may have lived out her life in misery but she lived a long life until cancer killed her. And even then, it wasn’t a painful death. Isabella’s mother took her own life because of the pain.

“Don’t,” Stella commands her. “Don’t feel sorry for any of them. They never felt it for you and they knew you were blood the whole time.”

“Isabella and Cristian knew?” she asks wide-eyed.

Stella nods her head.

“Your father never kept the truth from them. In fact, he blamed their mother’s death on you just as well as he did your mother.”

She knows it in her gut that it’s the truth because everything makes sense.

Isabella has always hated her hair and the way she looked because when they were seen on the estate together, visitors had often mistaken them as siblings. Isabella demanded she gets the most fucked up hair colors and styles all through high school because of it. Even Cristian made snarky remarks about their similarity.

Cristian, her brother.

Her stomach churns at the disgusting things that the monster has done to her and made her do. He knew all along that they were siblings and instead of keeping her safe as a big brother should, he’d been the first to set her on fire. Then again, maybe his saving grace is that he never had it in him to fuck her himself. No. He’d let his friends do so though and gotten paid well for it. And now she knows why.

Stella is right.

Isabella, Cristian, and even her father, Pietro, never wanted a bond to form so one never did. To them, she merely owed them her life in place of debt. A debt that never happened. A debt that was never her fault. That debt is the loss of their mother.

They’d created who she’s become.

“Fuck them,” she whispers out through gritted teeth. “Fuck them all,” she says more to herself than anyone else.

“I’m going to kill them,” Stella repeats. “Will you have an issue with that?”

The atmosphere that was churning in preparation for the storm now churns ten-fold. The security blanket of darkness, the one she felt when she was with Adam, she now knows is being created by Stella. It’s Stella who is stirring the storm. And she isn’t sure whether to admire the young woman or be afraid.

“Ari,” Stella calls, pulling her out of her thoughts before her