The Queen They Abandoned in the Shadows Chapter 01

The Queen They Abandoned in the Shadows Chapter 01

I ran into my son Noah, who I hadn’t laid eyes on in half a decade, at the supermarket.

He was dressed in a crisp little suit. Gone was the irritation and revulsion he’d always worn around me; in its place was raw, overjoyed relief, and his voice caught with emotion as he spoke.

“Mama… I’ve missed you so much.”

I slowly pulled my gaze away, trying to pick up a fallen coin with a hand missing two fingers.

Noah stepped forward, carefully placing the coin back into my palm. He flinched slightly the moment his eyes landed on my mangled hands.

“Why didn’t you come home to us when you got out of jail? Papa forgave you ages ago, honest.”

I turned and walked away without a single pause in my steps.

His jaw tightened, and he trailed closely behind me.

“Mama… are you abandoning us for good?”

I said nothing. Truth be told, I held no lingering affection for him anymore.

The gut-wrenching despair from five years ago had long burned away all my love and hatred for the two of them, father and son.

…

Noah was still on my heels by the time I got home. The second he stepped through the doorway, he wrinkled his nose, choked by clouds of dust rising from the floor.

He watched me roll up my sleeves and struggle to start cleaning the room with my damaged hands, and finally snatched the broom right out of my grip.

“Why do you wanna live like this when you could just say you’re sorry?”

“You always said you gotta pay for the bad things you do. You stole Aunt Bianca’s painting, so wasn’t Papa right sending you to jail?”

I stared quietly down at Noah, who’d grown to reach my waist, and spoke out of the blue.

“Go home. I’m not your mother.”

His chubby baby-faced complexion drained of color in an instant, and the vicious words he’d hurled at me at the art exhibition all those years ago crashed back into his mind.

“You’re not half as good as Aunt Bianca. You’re not as pretty, you can’t paint nearly as good, and you’re just a thief. I don’t like you, and I don’t wanna be your kid anymore.”

My own child had looked at me with such pure loathing back then that it felt like a knife to the chest.

He resented me, blamed me, screaming and scrambling away if I so much as tried to pull him into a hug.

Now that I no longer needed him, he clung to me instead, tentatively leaning his head against my hand, silently begging for me to stroke his hair.

“I’m sorry, Mama. I didn’t mean what I said back then.”

“Come home with me, please. Papa and I miss you every single day.”

The soft fuzz of his hair brushed against my palm, and my fingers flinched every time he called me Mama. The brutal, burning pain of having two fingers hacked clean off still lingered deep within my bone marrow, flaring up sharply at the sound of that man’s name, jangling every nerve in my body.

I pulled my hand back, ready to send Noah away once more, when the rickety wooden door creaked open. A face locked away in my memories for five years stood before me.

Matteo had matured, yet grown noticeably gaunt, his gaze fixed on me thick with an incomprehensible, aching longing.

“Elisa… I’ve finally found you.”

And yet it had been him who personally sent me to prison, his fingers wrapped tight around my throat as he snarled a brutal warning.

“Don’t ever cross my path again, Elisa. If you do, I’ll cut every one of your remaining fingers off and leave you maimed for life.”

I paid no mind to his reddened, tear-pricked eyes, shifting my gaze to the woman standing confidently behind him.

Bianca, my timid former junior apprentice, had flourished under Matteo’s devoted care and grown into a capable, authoritative Donna in her own right.

Every gesture exuded poise and self-assurance; her complexion was rosy, skin fair and smooth, nothing left of the scrawny, skittish girl raised in an orphanage.

Spotting the newcomers, Noah hurried over to grab Matteo’s hand, his face flushed with urgency.

“Papa, what took you forever? Mama won’t come home with me, please make her change her mind.”

Bianca bit her lip at those words, her eyes brimming with hidden jealousy and resentment toward me.

She stepped forward, lifting Noah into her arms despite his squirming, then looked up, tears spilling down her cheeks.

“It’s wonderful you’re back, Elisa. Noah has talked about you nonstop. Why don’t you come home with us today?”

She tugged at Matteo’s sleeve.

“Matteo, Elisa must have suffered terribly out here with no way to support herself. Let’s bring her back home.”

“Don’t worry about me getting upset over it.”

Matteo frowned as he looked around this dusty, dilapidated old house, sighing softly.

“Why didn’t you come to me the second you got out? All you had to do was say the word, and I could’ve fixed every single problem for you. Why let yourself rot away like this?”

I cut him off mid-sentence.

“I’m perfectly content with how things are now.”

This quiet, peaceful life kept me from spiraling into a hysterical wreck, drawing judgmental stares from everyone around me.

“What’s more, we’re already divorced. What identity would I even have to come back under?”

I watched Matteo’s face blanch pale with a cold stare, then spoke plainly, showing them the door.

Besides, I outlived the days when I was desperate for anyone’s help long ago.

Once, I’d dropped to my knees before him in hysterics, banging my head raw as I begged him to help clear my name—and he’d coldly kicked me away.

I’d begged him to save my mother, who was clinging to life on her deathbed, only for him to sneer and say I was just putting on a cheap act.

Every plea for aid only drove me further into despair at his hands, until he’d destroyed me entirely.