He Chose Another Heir, Now He Wants Me Back novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: The Door I Opened

Serena's POV

Alessio came into my mother's room at ten with a flat metal box in his arms.

Mama was asleep, with the rosary tangled in her fingers and the morning light on her face.

He did not speak.

He set the box on my knees, knelt on the floor beside my chair, and opened the lid.

I saw envelopes in his handwriting, all slit open along the top.

The top one had a Paris address I knew, and my name in his square, careful hand.

"Where did you get these?"

"Under Livia's bed."

My hands went cold.

I took the first one out and read it.

It was short.

It said: I have not filed it and I will not. Tell me where to send you anything you need. Come home when you want to and not before. Alessio.

I read the second.

It said: Your mother is asking about you. I told her you are well. I hope that is true.

I read the third, and the sixth, and the twentieth, with my lip between my teeth.

Every one of them was a few lines, and every one of them ended with his name and no other word.

"Seventy-two," Alessio said. "One every month."

"I never got a single one."

"I know that now."

He lifted the smaller bundle out from under them and held it toward me.

The blue ribbon was faded.

The top envelope was addressed to my mother in my own handwriting, with a stamp from the Paris post office I had stood in line at so many times.

I could not open it.

"I wrote to her every month," I said. "I wrote and wrote. I thought she had stopped answering because she was angry. I thought she was ashamed of me."

Behind my ribs, something that had been holding for six years gave way.

"She never saw them."

"No."

I pressed the bundle to my chest.

"You wrote seventy-two times," I said. "And you never once got on a plane."

Alessio flinched.

"I bought a ticket every March," he said. "I got as far as the gate."

"Why?"

"Because you signed the paper and broke your phone before I had finished a sentence." His voice was rough. "Because I thought if you wanted me, you knew where I was."

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