“Who is your father?
And…
does he really care about you that little?” I didn’t look at Matteo, but as I listened to every tiny sound, I realized he’d apparently returned to the armchair.
For such a huge man, he moved almost unnaturally quietly.
I kept wondering how old he was.
Matteo looked around twenty-two.
Maybe twenty-three, tops.
“You’re seriously underestimating yourself, Diana Amato.” There was something patronizing in his tone.
I couldn’t help myself.
I abruptly turned my head toward him.
He really was sitting in the armchair.
“You know who I am?” I asked, my lips dry.
Hearing my real surname sent a sharp jolt through my mind.
Or rather, it was the surname I’d been born with.
“I even know what color underwear you’re wearing right now.” He casually propped his head against his fist again.
I held my breath, unable to tell whether he was serious.
Of course he wasn’t.
That was impossible.
And yet, whenever I was around Matteo, my mind seemed to spiral into irrational thoughts.
“Obviously, I did a background check on the woman my father wants to see at my side.
It would be strange if I didn’t know your real surname.” I lowered my eyelids slightly.
For what felt like the first time, I studied Matteo with real attention.
At first, I’d assumed he was wealthy.
I’d gotten that impression from his shirt and trousers, which looked almost custom-made, and especially from the outrageously expensive watch on his wrist.
But now I realized the watch had to be a fake, and his clothes simply fit him well.
After all, there might be some benefit to joining our families, but the advantage would be so negligible that it could only matter to people who were already at rock bottom.
So…
Was Matteo’s family really that poor?
Were they that low in the hierarchy?
How badly had life kicked them around that they’d even considered someone like me?
“My condolences,” I said, pressing my lips together.
I wasn’t sure whether I meant it sarcastically or genuinely.
I probably shouldn’t have felt sorry for him at all, but people like us—those of us who’d drawn the short straw in life—didn’t exactly have it easy.
“For what?” Matteo asked, flicking his lighter and lighting another cigarette.
“Nothing.” I turned away and stared at the ceiling again.
My breathing became uneven.
My body trembled, and it felt as though even my bones were aching.
All of it had been triggered by nothing more than hearing my surname.
Amato…
I closed my eyes for a moment.
I’d thought I’d moved past all of this.
I’d built a new life and learned to exist in it.
But now, everything had come rushing back.
And once again, I found myself wondering: where had it all begun?
Had it really started with the car accident?
My hometown was Florence, and I’d been born into a genuinely happy, loving family.
At least, that was what you could call it when the child’s father was a man who held an entire city in fear.
I hadn’t known that back then.
I was too young, and I saw the world very differently from the way it really was.
But I had a gentle, loving mother.
An older brother who spent nearly all his time with me.
And a father who, despite being stern and intimidating, would carry me around in his strong arms and treat me like a princess.
Then, when I was five years old, my life split into two parts.
Before.
And after.
I was caught in a car accident…
Except it wasn’t simply an accident.
My father’s enemies had tried to kidnap me…
To kill me.
Something hadn’t gone according to their plan.
They probably hadn’t expected the car I was being transported in to flip over and go flying off the road.
But they had still managed to abduct me.
By the time they dragged me into an abandoned factory, my body was already broken in several places.
And they intended to finish the job.
A simple bullet to the head wasn’t enough for them.
They wanted to mutilate my body as thoroughly as possible so that my father would later have to see what they’d done to his daughter.
But they must have realized that my father’s people were already tracking them.
Those bastards were in a hurry.
They only had time to break the bones that had somehow remained intact.
It sounds horrific…
Because it was.
But I was still alive when my father’s men arrived.
But the question was—how alive was I, exactly?
I still remember my father hugging me in the hospital, and how I felt his hands trembling.
And I’ll remember for the rest of my life the way my mother cried.
Afterward, I spent a very long time in the hospital, and even when they finally brought me home, I remained under constant medical supervision.
All because I never fully came back to myself.
My body barely obeyed me; I couldn’t really walk.
It felt as if one leg was slightly longer than the other, and they had to feed me with a spoon.
I couldn’t lift my arms either.
But the worst part was my face.
It had gone numb, and I couldn’t move most of it.
My left eyelid wouldn’t open; my lips barely moved.
Everything had sagged.
I hadn’t been obsessed with my looks before, but when I was lying down, I could still pass for an ordinary child.
Sitting up, though, my face never let me forget the pity in other people’s eyes for even a second.
If before I had constantly heard things like “Oh my God, what a beautiful little girl” and other compliments about my appearance, after that… people found it hard to look at me.
That included my family.
Or especially them.
My mother cried nonstop whenever she was near me.
Sometimes she tried to hold it back.
She made attempts to talk to me, but it always ended in her sobs and tears streaming down her cheeks.
Over time, she started coming less and less often.
I think it hurt her too much to see me like that.
It was her way of protecting herself.
It was the same with my father.
There were no tears from him, but I could see the tearing pain in his eyes.
I was no longer his beautiful princess—I was a broken creature.
On top of that, I had become a cruel reminder that he had shown weakness and failed to protect his own child.
Maybe that was why, even when he came into my room, he never looked at me.
Only my brother visited me more or less regularly, even though what had happened hit him hard too.
Perhaps it also mattered that, as I later found out, our father’s enemies had actually been aiming for my brother.
They thought he was in the car, but in the end decided I would do just as well.
Sometimes I could feel the sharp guilt coming off him, though I never believed he was to blame for anything.
I tried again and again to tell him so, and I was simply glad of his company.
But time passed.
Life went on for everyone else.
My brother started school, tutors, friends.
And even though he still came to see me from time to time, I ended up alone in my room more and more often—each stretch longer than the last.
I could hear voices drifting up from the first floor.
I knew guests had started coming to the house again.
And that my brother’s friends were sometimes in his room.
Life really was continuing for everyone else, while I kept hoping that one day I would become part of it again, lighting up whenever someone from the family walked through my door.
A year and a half later, life split once more into “before” and “after.” I was seven.
Not an age when you can understand adult affairs, but even I felt the changed atmosphere in the house.
And when the nannies took me out to the garden for walks, I overheard scraps of conversation from my father’s people.
They talked about how the situation was heating up.
That something urgent needed to be done.
Only much later did I learn more of the details.
Several clans had united against my father, and now he needed an alliance with someone strong as well.
Otherwise, power in Florence would be lost, and our entire family would be wiped out.