They Never Loved Me. Now I Don’t Remember Them. Chapter 09

Five years after I disappeared, my parents had aged beyond recognition.

Matteo had changed too.

The news was showing another supposed sighting of Isabella Rinaldi.

Mom and Dad had rushed across the country to see the girl.

Matteo went with them.

The camera caught the moment they realized, once again, that she wasn’t me.

I pointed at the screen.

“Damian.”

“Those are my parents, aren’t they?”

Damian Marchetti looked at me.

Then he nodded. “Yes.”

“The medical treatment must be working. You’re remembering more.”

I looked back at the screen.

Over the past few nights, pieces of my old life had started coming back.

The broken coin bank.

My memory journal.

The filtered cigarette burning into my arm.

The rain.

And the car disappearing into the night.

Damian was quiet for a moment.

“Do you want to see them?”

“Your parents… Matteo… they’ve been looking for you for five years.”

I shook my head.

“No.”

“What would be the point?”

I could already imagine it.

Mom and Dad crying as they held me, saying they were sorry.

Promising they would never choose Bianca over me again,

Matteo standing in front of me with red eyes, telling me he’d made a mistake

Begging me to forgive him..

I had imagined those things so many times before.

Back when I still wanted them.

But now?

What could any of it change?

I looked down at the scar on my arm.

The burn had faded over the years, but it had never disappeared.

Neither had the marks on my back.

They reminded me of exactly how little I had meant to them when I was still there.

“I don’t know if they love me now,” I said quietly.

“Or if they just can’t live with what they did.”

I looked at Damian.

“But it doesn’t matter anymore.”

Five years ago, Damian’s people had found me in the Cinder District.

By then, I was soaked through, bleeding, and barely able to remember my own name.

He got me out of the country and took me to Austria for medical treatment.

The surgery helped.

So did the years that followed.

My memory came back slowly

Not everything. But enough.

More importantly, built a life-that didn’t depend on remembering who Isabella Rinaldi had once been.

I reached for Damian’s hand.

“Thank you.”

He squeezed my fingers.

“You never have to thank me for that.”

We were living in southern Spain now.

Far from Chicago.

Far from the Rinaldis.

Far from the Cinder District.

And I had no intention of going back.

The Rinaldis eventually placed a memorial marker for me in the family burial grounds.

There was no date of death on it.

Mom visited constantly.

Dad refused to let anyone call it a grave.

“My daughter isn’t dead,” he would say.

But they still left memorial flowers there.

As for Matteo-

he had ISABELLA tattooed along his inner forearm.

ISABELLA.

Every year on the anniversary of my disappearance, he locked himself in his private study and drank until

he could barely stand.

He never married.

They kept looking for Isabella Rinaldi.

But Isabella Rinaldi was gone.

I had changed my name years ago.

Anastasia. A name for someone born again.

One spring afternoon, Damian called to me from the garden.

“Ana?”

I turned toward him immediately.

For once, I knew exactly who he was.

And I knew exactly who I was.

I smiled and walked into the sunlight.

Don’t look for me anymore.

I’m no longer the mafia princess they threw away.

And I learned how to live again.