The Daughter They Erased Came Back Untouchable novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: The Gate

By eight that night forty people stood outside the villa gates.

I counted them from my window.

There were photographers on stepladders and a van with a satellite dish, and reporters holding microphones to their mouths and saying the same sentence into different cameras.

Gaetano brought me a tablet at nine and put it on the desk without a word.

The headline read: Falconieri Heiress Returns After Four Years. Family Says She Is Troubled.

Under it was a photograph of me at twelve, in a school sweater, looking frightened.

I had never seen it before.

Someone had picked it from the family albums, and I knew who.

"Papa's press office put it out at six," Gaetano said. "They say you're unstable. That you were removed from the house for a reason, and the family is trying to help."

"Help."

"They say there's a doctor waiting for you."

I read the first paragraph of the article, and then the second, and the third.

By the fourth I had stopped feeling anything at all, and that felt clean.

"Is it true?" Gaetano asked in a low voice. "That you didn't push her?"

"Ask Fiammetta."

"I did."

"What did she say?"

He gave a laugh with no joy in it.

"She locked her door."

I stood.

"Where are you going?"

"Out."

"Nerina, don't. They'll eat you."

"Then they can have a good look first."

I went downstairs in my gray school coat, because I had nothing else that looked like me.

The hall was empty.

The house staff had gathered at the end of the passage and watched me cross the marble.

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