The Queen They Abandoned in the Shadows Chapter 02

The Queen They Abandoned in the Shadows Chapter 02

A black Maybach pulled away from outside the window.

I knelt down, scrubbing away dust inch by inch with a rag, but a box tumbled out when I opened the cabinet. Its rusted, decaying combination lock snapped open on impact, spilling gold medals across the floor.

My fingers trembled. Every single medal was engraved with my name.

Elisa Moretti, First Place, National Junior Painting Competition; First Place, Youth Division; First Place, Adult Division.

Ninety-nine medals, marking every peak of my artistic career. Everyone who’d ever watched me paint called me a prodigy; art had woven itself into my very bones. It had earned me fame and fortune, and paid for my mother’s life-saving medical treatments.

It was also through painting that I’d met Matteo. He’d told me I looked like I was glowing whenever I had a brush in my hand.

He’d risked everything to fight off an arranged marriage the Santoro family had set for him. The night before his scheduled engagement, he’d jumped from a third-story window, nearly shattering his leg, just to bang on my front door.

He held out a dazzling diamond ring—rumored to be the Santoro family’s Donna heirloom ring—disheveled as a street beggar, yet his eyes blazed bright with unshakable resolve.

“Elisa, I will only ever love you in this lifetime. If I cannot marry you, I will choose to live alone forever.”

In that moment, he’d pried open the walls around my heart too.

I married into the Santoro family and gave birth to Noah. My mother-in-law softened toward me, and my mother’s treatment showed promising signs; happiness felt so overwhelming it was dizzying.

Everything unraveled the day Bianca, the girl I’d been sponsoring, stepped foot into my art studio.

On her very first day, she spilled coffee all over Matteo when he came to pick me up. Matteo frowned and vented to me late that night.

“Bianca seems awfully clumsy.”

I’d defended her then. An orphan who’d clung to painting through every hardship, she was my most promising junior protégé.

Somehow, Bianca’s name crept more and more often into conversations between Matteo and Noah.

When Matteo treated his staff to dinner, he’d specifically tell the restaurant staff, “Make the food extra spicy—Bianca loves spicy dishes.”

I was deathly allergic to chili peppers, unable to tolerate even a trace amount.

When I read him bedtime stories, Noah would rudely cut me off with a look of distaste. “Aunt Bianca tells stories way better than you. I don’t want to listen to yours.”

Bianca began wearing expensive jewelry well beyond what she could afford on her own income, and once posted a group photo online. The three of them grinning widely together beneath the amusement park Ferris wheel.

[So thankful to my two favorite people for finally bringing me to the amusement park I’ve always dreamed of checking out.]

Before I’d left for a work trip, I’d asked Noah if he wanted to come to that very same amusement park with me, only for him to roll his eyes and snap irritably.

“Amusement parks are so childish. I don’t want to go anymore.”

A lump formed tight in my throat, and dread washed over me. Abandoning the final wrap-up work for my art exhibition, I booked an overnight flight home. I walked in to find the three of them curled up on the couch watching a movie together.

Bianca was wearing a pair of brand-new pajamas I’d just bought for myself.

The second she spotted me standing haggard in the doorway, Matteo instinctively pulled her protectively into his chest. Noah stepped forward, throwing his arms out as if to shield her from me.

“Aunt Bianca got evicted by her landlord, so she has to stay with us.”

They looked every inch the loving family unit, leaving me nothing more than an unwanted outsider who’d stumbled in unannounced.

I lowered my gaze, gathered all my medals back into their box, and headed out to buy a bouquet of white chrysanthemums, walking slowly toward the cemetery. It had been five years since my mother had been laid to rest alone beneath cold earth.

I hadn’t noticed a tiny shadow trailing me until I reached the gravesite. Noah, who should have gone home long ago, had been secretly following me. The moment I set the flowers down, he rushed forward and knelt by my mother’s headstone, bowing his head in a silent prayer.

“Grandma, please rest easy. I’ll take good care of Mama from now on. Please make her come home with me, okay?”

He stole nervous glances up at my face, but my expression remained completely blank, my gaze toward him no different from how I’d look at a stranger on the street. Growing flustered, he waved his hand, and Matteo appeared at my side. He knelt by the headstone and placed his bouquet of white chrysanthemums beside mine, his knuckles white from gripping the stems so tightly.

He opened his mouth several times, but no words came out.

I squeezed my eyes shut, then roared sharply.

“Get away from her grave! You have no right to kneel there.”