The Real Mafia Heiress They Left Behind Chapter 06

The Real Mafia Heiress They Left Behind Chapter 06

“She’s not going to D.C.? Then where the hell is she supposed to go?” Marco scoffed, completely

unconcerned.

“She was so useless she almost couldn’t even get into a community college. She doesn’t have any money either. If she isn’t running to D.C. hoping we’ll support her, what else is she going to do, fly?”

Their mother nodded with absolute certainty.

“She’s just throwing a tantrum.”

“She changed her number on purpose. She wants us to panic.”

“Leave her alone. Let her go hungry for a few days. She’ll come crawling back on her own.”

Ivy bit her lip, her eyes reddening with tears.

“It’s all my fault…”

“If I hadn’t insisted on going to the beach, Serena wouldn’t have gotten so upset.”

She looked at their father anxiously.

“Dad… why don’t you call Serena’s college counselor?”

“What if something really happened to her?”

Their father frowned.

He kept insisting he didn’t care, but in the end, he still pulled out his phone.

He dialed Ms. Green’s number.

It rang for a long time before she finally answered.

“Hello, Mr. Moretti?” Ms. Green’s voice was noticeably cold.

Their father cleared his throat, slipping into the authoritative tone of a parent.

“Ms. Green, I wanted to ask which community college Serena enrolled in around Washington, D.C. The girl’s stubborn. We had a little family disagreement, and she ran off. We figured we’d go find her at school.”

Silence.

Several long seconds passed.

Then Ms. Green let out a sharp, incredulous laugh.

“Community college? Mr. Moretti. is this supposed to be a joke?”

He froze

“What do you mean?”

Her voice turned razor sharp, dripping with disbelief.

“Serena was the valedictorian of this year’s graduating class. Her SAT score was practically perfect.”

“Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford all offered her admission.”

“And you’re telling me her own parents thought community college was the best she could do?”

The living room fell completely silent.

Marco’s eyes nearly popped out of his head.

“That’s impossible! Every practice SAT report she brought home was near the bottom of the class. There’s no way she scored that high!”

Ms. Green clearly heard him through the phone, because her temper flared even hotter.

“Practice SAT reports? Did any of you ever bother looking at her real transcript?”

“When Serena first transferred from that farm upstate, she had a lot of catching up to do. Of course she

struggled at first.”

“But she studied until two in the morning every single night. By the spring semester of her junior year, she’d already climbed to number one in the entire grade.”

“And do you know what she asked me to do?”

“She begged me not to tell you.”

“She didn’t want your sickly younger daughter to feel inferior. She even pretended to be a poor student whenever she was around your family.”

Their mother’s face instantly drained of color.

Her lips parted, but no words came out.

Ms. Green took a slow breath before delivering the final blow.

“And another thing.”

“She never applied to any of the local colleges you assumed she’d attend.”

“She earned a full scholarship to Cambridge.”

“She boarded her flight to England yesterday morning.”

“By now, she’s already landed.”

England.

The single word shattered every ounce of the Moretti family’s arrogance.

Their father’s hand jerked violently.

The phone slipped from his fingers and hit the carpet with a dull thud.

“She… she went overseas?”

“Where did she get the money for a visa and a plane ticket?”

Ms. Green answered without a trace of warmth.

“Her Cambridge scholarship covers every expense.”

“She completed independent research before applying, and one of the senior professors in her department was so impressed that he personally invited her to join his research lab as an undergraduate.”

“She even received additional research funding.”

“She doesn’t need a single dollar from any of you.

The line went dead.

The mansion fell into a suffocating silence.

Luca stared at the phone on the floor, struggling to breathe.

Cambridge.

A full scholarship.

An invitation to join a university research lab before she’d even started college.

None of it matched the timid, invisible Serena he thought he knew. The girl everyone believed could barely

make it into community college.

He had always believed she couldn’t live without him.

Without this family.

That certainty had made it so easy to favor Ivy

So easy to let Serena swallow every injustice.

Because he’d been convinced she would always come back.

No matter what

Instead…

She had left without saying goodbye.

She had crossed an ocean.

She had flown somewhere completely beyond his reach.

For the first time in his life…

Luca realized he had been the biggest fool of all.