After My Father Was Murdered, I Thought He Was My Savior Chapter 10

After My Father Was Murdered, I Thought He Was My Savior Chapter 10

After ten hours of urgent travel, Rinaldo arrived in Milan.

He stood outside the forensic laboratory.

His raised hand could not bring itself to knock.

In the end, he only leaned silently against the wall and sat down.

He sat there until the next morning, when the lab director came to work and told him Valentina had already left the city.

Rinaldo’s heart sank straight into an ice pit.

He stumbled away from the lab.

Following the clues from the intelligence team, he passed through one complicated street after another, terrified that if he arrived one step too late, he would never find her again.

In front of an old church, his footsteps suddenly stopped.

I was standing on the steps, taking the final farewell photos for a victim’s body.

Sunlight poured through the stained-glass windows and fell across my work uniform.

I documented every detail carefully.

My face held focus and peace.

It was a kind of light he had never seen in me during those five years.

A bitter smile appeared on Rinaldo’s haggard face.

He felt relieved to see this independent version of me.

But at the same time, he could not accept the fact that he had lost me.

After struggling for a long time, he finally came closer.

But he did not approach me directly.

He only stood on the other side of the church.

In a hoarse voice filled with regret, he said, “Valentina, I’m sorry. I was a bastard for what happened back then.”

“All these years, I thought it was only guilt. It wasn’t until you left that I understood I had already fallen in love with you, so deeply I can barely breathe. Without you, I don’t know how to live.”

“I regret it. I regret every way I hurt you. I owe you a debt I can never repay in this lifetime. Please let me stay by your side and atone.”

“Everything I have, including my life, belongs to you.”

“I only want to protect you the way I did all these years. Let me stay, okay?”

The church bells rang with a long, solemn sound.

The organ played a requiem.

After a long time, I finally turned and looked at him.

My voice was as calm as still water.

“Rinaldo, you don’t deserve to stand beside me. Nothing you own belongs to me. It belongs to Noemi. Didn’t you already write your will?”

“All these years, I lived inside the lies you created. When I learned the truth, do you know how much I hated myself? I hated myself for loving you. For loving the murderer who killed my father.”

I looked at the face I had lived beside for five years.

I looked at the godfather who had come from Italy to Sicily.

Yet the hatred inside me suddenly became a blank emptiness.

Maybe everyone meets someone like this in their life.

Someone you are willing to trust with your life.

Only for him to stab you the deepest when you trust him most.

I stood high on the steps and looked down at him.

I pulled out a free, almost careless smile, but there was nothing left in my eyes.

“Rinaldo, I will never forgive you in this life.”

Under the blazing sunlight, Rinaldo felt cold all over.

A bitter smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

“Valentina, but I really do love you.”

His voice was as light as a sigh.

It scattered into the echoes of the church.

I raised my camera and recorded the expressions of every mourner in the church.

Only the man in the corner had his head lowered, as if carrying unbearable pain.

“Miss, could you take one last photo for the deceased?” an old woman asked, trembling as she handed over a family photo.

“Of course.” I smiled and set up the camera.

I froze their final reunion in time.

Just like twenty years ago, when Rinaldo and I stood in this church after he had first arrived in Sicily.

He had placed my father’s police badge into my palm and sworn that he would protect me and my father forever.

The vows of youth had been so sincere.

Back then, his eyes held only love for this land.

But later, the person who pushed my father into the abyss was him.