They Never Loved Me. Now I Don’t Remember Them. Chapter 08

Bianca forced a laugh.

“What surveillance footage? The surveillance cameras must’ve malfunctioned.”

Then she looked around.

“Why don’t you bring Isabella down here and let her accuse me herself?”

Matteo’s expression hardened.

“Bianca!”

She flinched.

“Stop lying.”

That was when she finally got scared.

“I… I saw her cash savings in her room. I thought she’d stolen them.”

“I broke the coin bank, and then I slipped on the pieces myself.”

Mom’s hands slowly curled into fists.

Matteo didn’t stop.

“And the filtered cigarette burn?”

Bianca bit her lip.

“She was upset about the locket. I just… burned myself and said she did it.”

Her voice grew defensive.

“It wasn’t even that bad.”

Matteo’s eyes turned cold.

“What else?”

“The time you said Isabella pushed you down the stairs?”

“The dead rat you said she put in your locker?”

Bianca’s face twisted.

“I did it! All of it!”

“I threw myself down the stairs. I put the rat there.”

She was shouting now

“I hated her!”

“She spent years missing, and then she came back and suddenly everyone expected me to make room for

her.”

“I wanted her gone!”

Even after saying it, Bianca still looked almost defiant.

She had spent years being forgiven for everything.

She clearly expected this to be no different.

Then she looked at Mom and Dad. And froze.

There was no affection left in their eyes. Only hatred.

“Mom…?”

Slap!

Mom struck her across the face.

“Don’t call me that.”

Her whole body was shaking.

“We raised you. We loved you.”

“And you did this to our daughter?”

Bianca stumbled toward Dad.

“Dad, please. I can explain-”

He stepped away from her.

“Enough.”

That night, Salvatore Rinaldi called in the senior family figures.

Bianca stood in front of them while he made the announcement himself.

“From this moment on, Bianca has no protection from the Rinaldi family.”

“She has no authority to speak for the Rinaldi family. She may no longer act under the Rinaldi name.”

“And anyone who shelters her after tonight is defying my authority.”

Bianca’s face went pale.

“Dad-”

“Expel her from the household.”

Two men dragged her toward the door.

She screamed and begged all the way out.

No one stopped them.

Five years passed.

Everyone knew that Isabella Rinaldi had disappeared the night Matteo De Santis left her in the Cinder

District.

The Rinaldi and De Santis families searched everywhere.

They offered more money than most people would see in a lifetime.

They chased every rumor and every possible sighting.

But they never found me.

Bianca, meanwhile, learned what the Rinaldi name had once protected her from.

The friends who used to surround her stopped answering her calls.

No one wanted to risk helping someone Salvatore Rinaldi had publicly disowned.

Eventually, she ended up in the same place where Matteo had abandoned me.

The Cinder District.

She was robbed. Used. Beaten.

Passed from one dangerous crowd to another whenever she owed money she couldn’t repay.

She slept in filthy rooms when she could afford them and wherever she could hide when she couldn’t.

Sometimes, drunk or desperate, she would still tell people,

“I’m Bianca Rinaldi

No one cared.

To them, she was just another woman with no money, no protection, and nowhere left to go.

And the Rinaldis never took her back.