The Shoeshine Girl and Her Godfather Father Chapter 05

The Shoeshine Girl and Her Godfather Father Chapter 05

His hand cracked across my face, snapping my head to the side. His face was livid.

“Sophia! You little liar!”

“Just to keep your mother from apologizing, you’d to make up something this disgusting?”

He took a step closer.

“You think I can’t find her?”

“If I find her, neither of you will be staying here anymore—I’ll make sure of it.”

I just stared at him, cold and silent. Then, after a long moment, I laughed.

“Fine. Go find her, then. If you’re so capable, go ahead and take her back.”

He stared at me for a long moment. Then he let out a cold laugh.

“Your words. Don’t regret them later.”

After he left, the mall manager approached me awkwardly.

“It’s not that we don’t want you here, Sophia.”

“It’s just that you’ve offended the Moretti family…”

He didn’t have to finish. I already understood.

I closed my shoe-shine box and made my way back to my apartment on my crutch.

The moment I opened the door, I saw my mother’s photo on the table.

I reached out and touched her smiling face. Tears poured down my cheeks.

“Mom… if it weren’t for protecting me, you’d still be alive…”

My vision blurred with tears.

And I was dragged back to the days before my college entrance exams.

Renata stormed into my school, slapped me across the face in front of everyone—teachers, students—then pointed at me and shouted.

“Do you all know her mother was a mistress? She’s an illegitimate daughter!”

The entire hallway fell silent. Every eye turned toward me—filled with disgust, with contempt.

My whole body shook with fury.

“What are you talking about? You’re the mistress!”

Renata sneered. Then she held up the marriage certificate.

“Your mother’s is fake. This one—Antonio and I—is real. I’m his only lawful wife.”

I couldn’t believe it. I rushed forward to get a closer look.

Before I could even touch her, she let out a shriek and collapsed to the floor, one hand clutching her stomach.

The next second, a powerful shove sent me flying backward.

My forehead slammed into the wall. Pain exploded through my head.

All I heard was my father’s furious roar.

“Sophia! If anything happens to Renata, I’ll never forgive you or your mother!”

He scooped Renata into his arms and rushed toward the hospital.

He never noticed the blood running down my forehead, or the empty pant leg beneath my uniform—the leg I had already lost.

When Mom heard what happened, she came to pick me up.

All the way home, she held me tight, carefully cleaned my wounds, and cried the entire time.

“Sweetheart.” Her voice trembled. “We’re packing tonight.”

“We’ll leave this place and going somewhere they’ll never find us.”

“Okay.” I said, my voice thick with tears.

But before we could even reach our front door, a group of debt collectors blocked our path.

One of them grabbed me. They said they were taking me to pay off our debts.

My mother threw herself in front of me. Like a woman possessed.

They beat her until bones cracked and left her collapsed in a pool of blood.

I cried the whole way as I got her to the hospital, but we couldn’t afford the treatment, and they refused to admit her.

There was only one place left to go. The Moretti estate.

I hobbled there on my crutch and begged for money—two hundred thousand dollars. Enough to save my mother.

My father only frowned.

“Cut the act. I was never in debt. Why would anyone be coming after you for money?”

His eyes were icy.

“Renata lost her baby because of you.”

“And you have the nerve to come here playing the victim?”

“You want two hundred thousand?”

He let out a cold laugh. “I wouldn’t give you twenty dollars.”

“Now get the hell out of here!”

One of the men beside him immediately stepped forward to throw me out. But Renata stopped him.

She walked over slowly, looking down at me with undisguised satisfaction gleaming in her eyes.

“You want money, right?”

“Then give me an apology I can actually believe.”

“Do that, and I’ll ask Antonio to let you borrow it.”