He Chose My Stepsister at Our Engagement,I Walked Out and Never Came Back

I gripped the edge of the doorway hard, just to keep myself from shaking too badly.

The impatience on Lorenzo's face was plain for anyone to read.

"Adriana, why are you being so unreasonable? Everyone makes mistakes. Where's your generosity gone?"

He had watched with his own eyes as Vittoria and her mother drove me to the brink of throwing my own life away.

There was a time he would have stood between me and them, would have raised his voice in the old Castellano study until the soldiers in the hall went still.

What in the world had turned him into a man standing on the other side of the room now, shielding Vittoria like she carried his blood?

I let the pain swallow me whole, and told Lorenzo word by word:

"Unless she dies in front of me, I will never forgive her!"

A vein jumped at Lorenzo's temple, anger simmering just beneath the surface.

This was exactly how he used to look when he raged at Vittoria and her mother for me.

"Adriana Castellano! Two years across the water and you come back this vicious creature? Fine. Don't forgive her, then apologize to her. I won't have men laughing in the social clubs that my intended is a petty, poisonous shrew."

"Your mother put herself in the ground because she was weak. If she'd spared one thought for how young you were, your father would never have buried a wife and married into the Marchetti name. Don't pin all your misfortune on Vittoria and her mother. Rosa was wrong, but it wasn't a crime worth dying over. If you mean to fixate and torture yourself the way your mother did, then you deserve every nightmare you get."

He nearly spat the word nightmare through his teeth.

The disgust that flickered across his face, I caught it clearly.

So the man who once swore on his life to protect me had, in the end, grown sick of me and my nightmares.

In the end, all my misfortune and all my pain had become the blades he used to hurt me, running me through until nothing was left whole.

The man who once went red-eyed the instant he heard me cry out in the dark would never again gather me close and say:

"Adriana, I'm here. No nightmare, no monster, no demon will ever lay a finger on you."

He'd carried me out of the abyss with his own hands, and now he had shoved me back into it with those same hands.

For Vittoria's sake, he stood there and told me I deserved it.

My body trembled until I couldn't hold the doorway any longer, and I staggered backward.

Lorenzo caught me with quick hands and only then saw my knees, swollen and red.

He dropped into a crouch to look at the injury.

"How did your knees get hurt this badly?"

"Forget it. If you won't apologize, I'll apologize for you. But you can't be this rude from now on."

I tore my hand free, my face ashen, and pointed at the door.

"Get out. All of you, get out."

Lorenzo knew exactly how close to breaking I was in that moment, and reached to pull me into his arms to settle me.

But Vittoria, tears streaming down her face, bowed to me.

"Adriana, I'm leaving now. Please don't torment yourself over me anymore."

The moment the words left her mouth she bolted for the door, but she turned too fast and slammed into the frame, her whole body toppling to one side. Her fingers had been twisting that pendant at her throat, and her smile had held a half-second too long before the fall.

Lorenzo released me instantly, lunging to catch her, and the two of them went down together just past the threshold.

Even so, Vittoria's head still struck the frame, the spot flushing red at once, a thin line of blood seeping through.

Lorenzo scrambled up, swept her into his arms, and rushed for the elevator.

"Vittoria, does it hurt? I'll get you to a doctor right now."

At last the doorway fell quiet.

The hush that came after was the hush of a room after a sit-down ends badly, when everyone already knows what's coming and no one will say it aloud.

And my heart sank to the very bottom.

Ten years of knowing each other, ten years of loving each other, and in the end we'd become strangers.

I took out my phone and booked myself passage on a flight for the day of the alliance ceremony.

Seven days left. Just enough time to clear away everything from the past.

Lorenzo was right. A person has to look forward.

I pressed my thumb against the bare band of skin where my mother's ring once sat, and held it there until the trembling stopped.

From this day on, I would cut myself off completely from all the joy and all the pain of what we had been.