Chapter 37 #2
Enrico stepped forward at the same time I did, his eyes widening with real concern.
“Clara—” he started, arms lifting toward her.
But Clara flinched back, hugging her stuffed animal tighter, and she looked at him with a heartbreakingly big kind of hurt for someone so small.
“I don’t want you!” she cried, voice shaking with fear and anger as tears spilled harder. “You make Mommy cry!” She turned toward me, desperate. “Mommy, please—let’s go! I want to go back to our house!”
I ran to her and scooped her up immediately, holding her tight against my chest as her little body shook with sobs.
“It’s okay, baby,” I whispered, stroking her hair, trying to calm her while turning her away from the scene. “Mommy’s here. It’s okay. We—We’re okay.”
Over her head, I threw one last look back.
Enrico stood frozen.
His hands were still half-extended. His eyes shining with devastation.
And for the first time, he looked like a man who was finally facing the true consequences of every cruel decision he’d made.
THIRTY-SEVEN
ENRICO FERRARA
Darkness still clung to the mansion when I finally got back to S?o Paulo.
My footsteps hit marble and wood in quick, echoing strikes, the familiar house silent—too silent—stripped of any comfort it might have once represented. Nothing in it felt warm anymore. Nothing in it felt like safety.
My chest burned with a crushing mix of rage, regret, and the most desperate kind of betrayal, and I couldn’t think about anything except one fact:
I needed to confront my grandmother.
I needed to look Eloá Ferrara in the eye and force her to own what she had done.
After my own daughter rejected me—after she looked at me like I was something to fear and told her mother to take her away—I was left with nothing. Not even the right to drown in my own grief.
Because I had rejected them first.
I had made her mother cry.
And far worse than Clara’s small mind could ever understand, I had built the man she was afraid of with my own hands.
“Eloá!” I called, my voice loud and sharp as I stepped into the main room.
The sound carried through the house, hard-edged, weighted with fury I could barely contain.
A few seconds later, she appeared at the top of the stairs.
Silk robe. Elegant. Black with gold detailing at the cuffs.
Tied neatly at her narrow waist as if she’d had time to plan even her indignation.
Her gray hair was twisted into a flawless chignon despite the hour.
Her face—clean of makeup—looked even harder without the softening tricks of powder and paint.
Her posture was what it always was.
Tall. Regal. Untouchable.
“What is the meaning of this intrusion in the middle of the night, Enrico?” she demanded coldly as she began to descend.
I drew a breath through my teeth, forcing myself not to explode on the first word.
“It means you have a great deal to explain,” I said, voice tight with contained violence. “I know everything, Eloá. I know what you did to Valentina.” I stepped closer to the base of the stairs. “I know how you manipulated me all these years.”
She stopped mid-stair.
For a brief, startling second, her expression shifted—genuine surprise cracking through her usual composure.
Her mouth parted as if she’d forgotten how to arrange her face.
Then she recovered.
The mask slid back into place.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she replied smoothly, adjusting her robe with studied elegance—but there was a hesitation under the words.
A hairline fracture.
Guilt.
“Don’t lie to me.” My control snapped. I surged forward a step. “I have proof. Altered photos. Fabricated emails. Payments sent to the people involved in that grotesque farce.” My voice rose, rough with fury. “You set it up so I would believe Valentina betrayed me.”
Eloá’s eyes narrowed, the last trace of pretense dropping away as she descended the remaining steps.
“You think I did all of that without reason?” she asked, and she didn’t deny it. Not even once. Her voice was ice. “That woman was a direct threat to everything we built. You were blinded by your childish desire and too weak to see what she represented—a danger to our name, to our family.”
“She was innocent!” I shouted, anguish and fury twisting together until my voice shook. “You destroyed her life without mercy—and you destroyed mine with it!” The words tore out of me. “Valentina didn’t deserve what we did to her.”
Eloá stopped only a few feet away, holding my gaze with venomous defiance.
“I did what was necessary to protect you,” she said, contempt sharpening every syllable. “If you can’t see that, you’re a sentimental fool. Your obsession with that little woman has already cost you too much.”
Something sharp and hot burned at the center of my chest, spreading fast, reaching into every part of me.
I stood still for a moment, staring at the woman in front of me as if I were seeing her for the first time.
The woman who raised me.
The woman I spent my entire life trying to impress—trying to repay an impossible debt after she took me and my brothers when our parents died.
“Protect me?” My voice came out low and rough, soaked in pain I never believed I’d show her.
“Is that what you call it?” I swallowed hard.
“You destroyed an innocent woman’s life.
You destroyed mine, Eloá.” My chest tightened.
“You stole any chance I ever had at genuine happiness.” The words turned darker.
“You stole four years from my daughter’s life.
From your great-granddaughter.” My voice broke around the truth.
“All because I loved someone you deemed unworthy?”
She lifted her chin as if my words couldn’t touch her.
“Don’t be dramatic, Enrico,” she said. “Your happiness was never in that woman. You’re too weak to admit you were being manipulated by a cheap opportunist.” She took another step as if closing the conversation with her presence. “I simply did what you didn’t have the courage to do.”
Bitter taste rose in my throat.
Rage and grief tangled until they were nearly indistinguishable.
“She wasn’t an opportunist,” I said, my hands shaking with restrained violence.
“She never was.” My voice rose again, raw now.
“I loved her, Eloá.” The confession hit like blood on my tongue.
“I loved her more than I’ve ever loved anything in this miserable life.
” I stepped closer, unable to stop. “And you destroyed it like it meant nothing.”
My voice betrayed me at the end—unsteady, almost breaking. Years of emotion I’d buried under arrogance and control surged to the surface.
For the first time in my life, I was completely vulnerable in front of her.
Eloá didn’t soften.
Her eyes held disgust like it was a virtue.
“You’ve always been disappointing, Enrico,” she said coldly.
“I expected you to be strong. Worthy of everything I invested in you.” Her gaze sharpened.
“But now I see I was wrong. You’re weak like your father—sentimental, foolish, incapable of making necessary decisions.
” She didn’t blink. “You would throw everything we built away for a woman of no value.”
Something inside me cracked.
Not a small fracture.
A breaking.
Her words went through me with a violence I wasn’t prepared to feel. A helplessness—an absolute despair—flooded my chest and stole my air.
“How can you be so cruel?” I whispered, my voice trembling.
Heat burned behind my eyes—tears I had always forced back, always swallowed, now threatening to spill.
“Everything I’ve done… every choice I made…
was to honor you. To prove I was worthy of your approval—your love.
” My throat tightened. “How could you destroy everything I am so easily?”
“Because you never understood what it means to be a Ferrara,” she replied.
She moved closer, slow and calculated. “You were never worthy of it. I’ve always needed to ensure you didn’t destroy what I built.
” Her voice lowered, ruthless. “Every action I took was necessary. Because you’re too weak to do what must be done. ”
I shook my head as each word demolished what was left of my loyalty, my faith—my entire understanding of who I was.
My certainty broke apart in real time.
“No,” I breathed, stepping back, nausea rising hard and fast. “You’re wrong.
” My voice turned sharper, desperate. “You’re the one who’s never been human.
” I stared at her, suddenly sick with clarity.
“You’re the one who’s never known how to love anyone but yourself and your power.
” My chest heaved. “You manipulated me. You destroyed my life. You stole everything good I had.” My voice cracked.
“You killed who I was—and now I don’t even know what’s left of me. ”
One tear slipped down my face—heavy and hot, carrying years of pain in a single line.
I didn’t care if she thought it made me weak.
Nothing mattered anymore except the truth tearing through me.
“You don’t deserve my loyalty,” I said, voice shaking, barely above a whisper.
“Not my respect. Not my love.” I held her gaze with everything I’d never allowed her to see.
“You and I are done, Eloá. Everything you were to me is over.” The words felt like a funeral.
“I never want to see you again. You’re dead to me. ”
I turned away.
And as I walked toward the exit, every step felt heavier—like I was leaving behind the version of myself I’d spent my entire life building to survive her.
The door slammed behind me with a final, gunshot sound that echoed through the sleeping house.
I stood outside, breathing like my lungs didn’t work right, feeling destroyed and directionless.
There was no going back.
The Enrico Ferrara I had been—until that moment—was dead.
Killed by the hands of the woman I had called grandmother. The woman I trusted blindly my whole life.
All that remained was the shadow of who I’d been… and the horrifying realization that I had no idea how to rebuild anything after that kind of betrayal.
When the door of my S?o Paulo penthouse finally shut behind me—muffled, final—I barely remembered how I got there.
I vaguely remembered thinking I couldn’t make the pilot fly a third time in less than twenty-four hours, but the rest was blank. A blur of movement, decisions made by instinct, not thought.
The automatic lights turned on, revealing a space that felt empty and impersonal—exactly like me.
I walked through the open living area, looking at what I once considered a refuge.
Now it was nothing but cold walls and objects without meaning.
My eyes burned. My throat felt raw. The pain in my chest was nearly unbearable. My entire life had been shaped by lies, manipulation, betrayal—
and now I could see it with brutal clarity.
I dropped heavily onto the sofa, pressing my hands to my face. Emotional exhaustion like I’d never known before weighed down every limb.
Eloá’s words echoed in my head, corrosive, stripping away every last trace of pride and certainty.
Valentina’s face rose in my mind—eyes full of hurt and disgust as she called me a coward.
And Clara…
My daughter.
The way she backed away from me, afraid. The way she begged to leave. The memory of her tears—small and terrified—destroyed me completely.
I did that.
I was responsible for all of it.
The truth crushed me until a deep, desperate sound tore out of my chest, something between a sob and a broken breath.
I had always taken pride in being strong. In controlling everything.
Now I could see I had never truly been in control.
I had ruined the lives of the two people who mattered most in my world.
The oppressive silence around me only made the failure louder.
I had no strength left to fight, no energy left to justify what I’d done.
How could I face Valentina again after this?
How could I look my daughter in the eyes without feeling sick with shame?
The weight in my body dragged me into the bathroom.
I turned on the shower and stood under the hot water as if it could burn the regret out of my skin.
It didn’t.
I braced my hands against the cold tile, my chest too tight to breathe properly. I squeezed my eyes shut, but the images kept coming—Valentina’s devastated stare, Clara’s sobs, my own hands doing damage I couldn’t undo.
I was completely broken.
I stayed there for a long time, water pouring down, mixing with the silent tears I finally let escape—hidden by the rush of the shower.
When I got out, I wrapped a towel around my waist and walked into the bedroom. My phone lay dead on the bed, uncharged, forgotten.
I didn’t plug it in.
I didn’t want contact with anyone. I didn’t want voices. I didn’t want advice.
I wanted silence.
I wanted to face this private hell alone—the one I had built with my own choices.
I lay down and stared at the ceiling with empty eyes, letting the unbearable weight of remorse crush me without resistance.
Because for the first time in my life, I didn’t know how to fight anymore.