Chapter 2
1050 Words
I grew up an orphan.
I met Adrian when I was waiting tables at a restaurant, and I spilled soup all over Bianca's shoes.
The shoes were expensive, the kind I could never pay back, so she told me to get down on my knees and lick them clean.
Everyone around us whispered that I was dead meat. Bianca was the eldest daughter of the most terrifying mafia family in Seabridge, and she had a reputation for grinding every offense into dust.
I was already bending my knees when Adrian got to his feet. He set a black card down on the table in front of her and pushed it across with two fingers, easy and unhurried.
"I'll cover it," he said. "Leave her alone."
I lifted my head and looked at him. The light fell from above and turned the sharp lines of his face to gold, catching even the edges of his lashes.
Bianca's face went blotchy red. She grabbed her bag, threw me a glare that could have cut skin, and stormed out.
He came back every day after that.
When she brought her crew in to smash plates across the floor and ordered me to pick up the shards with my bare hands, he called the manager over with a flick of his wrist and had another server sent in my place.
When she flung an entire glass of red wine straight at me, he picked up his own glass and flung it right back at her.
I collapsed from a fever on the sidewalk one afternoon on my way to work, and when I opened my eyes again, he was sitting beside my hospital bed with shadows bruised deep under his eyes. His voice came out scraped raw.
"Summer," he said, "let me keep you safe for the rest of my life."
I believed it would last a lifetime. I honestly did.
Then Bianca's hatred boiled over, and she drove her car straight at Adrian, and I threw myself in front of him before I could think. When I came to, the world had gone entirely dark.
The doctors called it irreversible optic nerve damage.
Adrian held my hands and cried so hard he choked on the air in his own throat. "Don't be scared," he said. "Let me be your eyes from now on. I'm your home."
I crawled through all that darkness alone, dragging myself inch by inch, and I collected bruises so deep my body looked like it had been beaten with a pipe. That was when he and Bianca shook hands and became dear friends.
"She's sorry for what happened," he told me. "Can we just pretend none of it ever happened?"
One of them forgave the crime, and the other turned the page. I was the only one still trapped inside the nothing, clawing at it until I was raw to the bone.
*****
A year ago, the head of Seabridge's most powerful mafia family tracked me down. He told me I was the daughter he and his wife had been searching for, lost for over two decades.
Bianca was a fraud, he said. A replacement. He begged me to come home.
Because of Adrian's words—"I'm your home"—I had said no. I'd tucked that DNA report into the deepest corner of my drawer and locked it away.
I wasn't going to be that stupid again.
On the other end of the line, my father and brothers—strangers to me until this moment—answered almost immediately. Their voices were barely steady. "Summer?"
I was quiet for a second. Then I said, slowly, clearly, "Dad, brothers. I'm coming home. And I want Bianca out of the place she took from me. Completely."
"Good." My father's voice was solid as stone. "I'm sending someone for you right now."
I hung up and started packing.
From the drawer, I pulled out my marriage certificate with Adrian.
Back then, I couldn't see. He'd kissed my forehead and told me it was proof of our future.
Now, under the light, I could finally read what was on the paper.
The bride's name said: Bianca Moore.
So this was his idea of giving me a home—putting another woman's name where mine should have been.
I didn't cry. I almost felt lucky.
Lucky that I wouldn't have to go through a messy divorce. Lucky that I was finally walking away for real.
I pushed open the door. The garden was full of roses.
Adrian was standing among them with Bianca, still trying to cheer her up.
She pricked her finger on a thorn and let out a theatrical whimper.
Adrian looked back at me and barked, "Are you blind? Bianca's hurt. Go get a bandage!"
He was so consumed by her pain, he'd forgotten that I was supposed to be the blind one.
He'd never once noticed the bruises on my legs.
"I am blind," I said. "If she needs a bandage, she can get it herself."
His face stiffened. He muttered a half-hearted sorry.
I ignored him. For the first time, I took in the rose garden.
9,999 roses. He'd once held my hand and said every petal I touched was proof of his love.
Now Bianca kicked at the branches and whined, "I hate them. Just like her. I like jasmine."
"I'll tear them all out tomorrow and plant jasmine," Adrian said, pulling her into his arms. "She can't see them anyway."
The words drifted in the wind. So this garden was never about love. Just cheap props for his own performance.
I walked over to the nearest rose, crouched down, and yanked it out by the roots.
Thorns dug into my palm. Blood seeped through.
But I didn't stop. Compared to three years of darkness, this pain was nothing.
One by one, I tore them out. I was going to clear the wreckage myself, and uproot every last piece of longing and regret.
Footsteps thundered behind me.
Adrian grabbed my bleeding hand and spat, "Are you out of your mind? What the hell are you doing?"
I fell back into the mud and petals, blood staining my white gown.
My gaze went past him, past Bianca. My voice was flat.
"Adrian," I said. "I want a divorce."
- Writer
