Their Cruelest Joke Cost Them Everything Chapter 10

Their Cruelest Joke Cost Them Everything Chapter 10 A Life of My Own

Celeste’s POV:

Alessio hurried up the steps.

“Celeste.”

Exhaustion roughened his voice.

“I am sorry I came without warning. You blocked every way I had to reach you. I did not know what else to do.”

He stopped in front of me and searched my face.

“Go home,” I said. “Coming here changes nothing.”

His expression tightened.

“I chose to come. I will wait as long as it takes for you to forgive me.”

I cut him off. “If you want this to end with any dignity, stop now.”

Panic flickered in his eyes.

“I cannot leave. If I walk away from Bellamont, then we truly are finished.”

“We have been finished for a long time.”

“You are here because you cannot bear losing me, not because I need you. None of this repairs what you did. It only makes your guilt easier to live with.”

Alessio stood rigid as his face slowly paled.

I looked at him one final time.

“To me, this is not atonement.”

“It is just another burden.”

I later heard that Alessio returned to his family.

He never contacted me again or sent another gift.

At last, the long mistake we had called love came to a complete end.

My parents and Bianca fared even worse than I had expected.

They reportedly moved into a cramped apartment. Mother once sent a letter through an acquaintance, reminding me that they were still my parents and begging me not to be so ruthless.

I returned it unopened.

For years, they had said family should never keep score.

Only after losing everything did they remember I was their daughter.

They remembered too late.

Bianca continued to unravel.

One moment she cursed my parents for deceiving her; the next, she sat beside the phone imagining Alessio would come for her.

Mother once took her to the Rinaldi estate, but they were refused at the gate.

Back at the apartment, Bianca destroyed everything she could reach and demanded to know why none of the promises made to her had come true.

Father blamed Mother for spoiling her. Mother blamed Father for murdering Renato and destroying their home.

The three people who had hurt me again and again now lived under one roof, despising and tormenting one another.

When I heard the news, I paused only briefly before returning to the document in my hands.

Whether they prospered or suffered had nothing to do with me anymore.

By the end of my second year away, I had become the youngest partner at the firm.

I moved into a brighter apartment and, for the first time, had a home that belonged entirely to me.

There were no portraits filled with false smiles, no demands that I surrender in the name of family, and no one who treated my pain as entertainment.

People occasionally asked whether I regretted leaving everything behind.

My answer never changed: no.

I used to believe a home required my parents’ approval, Bianca’s affection, and Alessio’s love.

Eventually, I understood that a true home should not leave me covered in wounds or demand my dignity as the price of belonging.

When spring arrived, I took a trip alone to the outskirts of Bellamont.

Sunlight spilled across fields of flowers, and the wind carried the faint green scent of grass and leaves.

Standing there, I remembered the injured girl who had once walked through the rain all the way back to the estate.

She could never have imagined that she would one day release them and claim a new life.

My phone rang. A colleague was reminding me that our celebration dinner was about to begin.

I answered with a smile and walked toward the car waiting beside the road.

This time, I did not look behind me.

The past was over.

My life was finally beginning.