While My Daughter Burned to Death, My Husband Soaking in A Hot Spring Chapter 01

While My Daughter Burned to Death, My Husband Soaking in A Hot Spring Chapter 01

That evening, I had been driving back from an ordinary residential neighborhood toward our villa district when I saw black smoke rising from the direction of our house.

The whole street was packed with people.

The fire trucks were late. Someone had apparently made a false report earlier, sending the entire fire department to a place where there was no fire.

I ran into the flames.

The smoke was so thick I could barely open my eyes.

I found my daughter in her bedroom.

She was lying on the bed, quiet as if she were asleep, but her body had been burned so badly I could no longer see the clothes she had been wearing. Even her skin had turned black.

When I carried her out, she still had one breath left.

The ambulance arrived forty minutes later.

The doctor told me she had inhaled too much smoke, and they had found a high concentration of benzodiazepine sedatives in her system.

In plain words, sleeping pills.

She had never woken up when the fire started.

I called Enzo like a madwoman.

The first call went unanswered.

The second was rejected.

The third rang more than a dozen times before he finally picked up.

“Enzo! The house is on fire! Au… Aurora, she…”

“I’m dealing with something urgent. We’ll talk later.”

Then he hung up.

That was the last time my daughter heard her father’s voice.

Enzo did not appear until the police came to investigate the fire.

He wore a robe from the resort under a trench coat, and there were kiss marks on his neck.

His first words were not to ask how our daughter was.

Instead, he roared at me in front of the police.

“Adriana, I want a divorce. If you hadn’t gone back to your mother’s house to take care of your sick mother, our daughter wouldn’t be dead.”

“You killed Aurora!”

He pointed at me, his voice so loud the whole building seemed to shake.

“You’ll die a terrible death.”

I stared into his eyes and asked him, “Then what were you doing at the time, Enzo?”

He panicked, his face turning red.

“You bitch. Our child is dead, and you’re still suspecting me? The family had an emergency. I was in a meeting.”

The police told me the conclusion of their investigation.

The fire had started with the stuffed bear by my daughter’s bed.

Someone had lit a scented candle on her nightstand. After the stuffed bear tipped over, it set the sheets on fire.

Her room had been full of flammable materials, curtains, plush toys, a wool rug. The fire had gone out of control in under three minutes.

The second Enzo heard it was caused by a scented candle, he turned and cursed at me.

“I told you not to buy those things, but you insisted. Now Aurora is dead. Are you satisfied?”

I said nothing.

Because I knew Aurora had been afraid of fire since she was three years old.

She would never light a candle on her own.

And that scented candle had always been kept in the highest kitchen cabinet. She could not have reached it.

The day after the fire was put out, I quietly returned to the ruins before the police seal was fully enforced.

In the corner under my daughter’s bed, I found a gold lighter.

Engraved on it was the De Luca family insignia: a wolf and a rose.

I also found a bottle of sleeping pills.

They were prescribed to me when I suffered postpartum insomnia. I had stopped taking them long ago, and Enzo knew where they were kept.

Through the hidden surveillance camera I had installed before leaving, I saw the truth.

Enzo had returned home that afternoon, mixed sleeping pills into our daughter’s juice, and fed it to her.

Then he lit the scented candle and placed it on her nightstand.

He told our daughter, “Daddy lit you a little sleep candle, sweetheart. Take a good nap.”

Aurora obediently closed her eyes.

He walked out of the room and shut the door.

Less than twenty minutes later, the stuffed bear tipped over, and flames swallowed the entire bedroom.

His phone records showed that after leaving, he drove straight to a hot spring resort in the Alps.

The room reservation was under “Enzo De Luca & Serena Ricci.”

I had not planned to go back to my mother’s house at all.

I could not bear to leave Aurora.

It was Enzo who sweet-talked me.

“Your mother’s illness matters. Go take care of her. I’m home. Don’t worry.”

There was an old Italian saying.

Il lupo non mangia il lupo.

Wolves do not eat wolves.

I had thought that no matter how rotten he was, he would never hurt his own flesh and blood.

I was wrong.

He was no wolf.

He was a snake.