It's Just A Picture (BL)
Chapter 223: There was love in our family, Father. Freedom

Chapter 223: There was love in our family, Father. Freedom

"It’s no use." Allegra said. "They never listened to me when they were young. How could they listen to me now that they’re all grown up, adults, and can make decisions for themselves." She explained and they both fell silent.

Fallen under her father’s rule and not able to live in freedom as she wished, Allegra never once smiled. She was still so brilliantly beautiful with her golden locks and piercing emerald eyes.

She didn’t look like she was almost fifty either. There were no wrinkles on her face and her skin was still so smooth.

One could assume she had been blessed with eternal beauty.

"If they won’t listen to you, then I’ll just get someone they at least talk to." He said, and Allegra furrowed her eyebrows. "Your brother is coming back soon." He said. "If it’s him, we can proceed to drag those boys back without much difficulty."

"Father," Allegra called loudly, dropping her hands on his desk. "Did you ever think this might be the dream of those boys?" She asked.

"Nonsense. They are both my blood and my blood can never have such flimsy and feeble dreams. They are meant to be on top of the world but not like this. Not in this disgraceful manner." He exclaimed. "We shall drag them back here and give them dreams that they can be happy with."

"Ah, just like you did to me." She said, standing straight as she took her hand back. She had this mocking smile on her lips as she said, "In your eyes, I am living the best life. I am happy and need nothing. In your eyes, your dreams are the only dreams that can make one happy. In your eyes," she bit her soft lush and pink lip and added, "...what we want doesn’t matter. It never was and never will be, eh?"

"A father knows best!" He said and in anger, Allegra banged his table.

It shocked him as that was the first time she was acting that way in front of him.

"Have you gone insane?" He yelled at her but she was adamant.

"Yes, father. Yes. I have gone insane. I am mad. I..." She was practically short of words as she fought back to hold in her tears. "I am 49 years old, yet I cannot dictate for myself, and I do not have the right to do what makes me happy, so of course I have gone crazy, Father. I am mad with rage and not just at you, but at myself."

"What is this insolence, child?"

"This is me revolting." She said, and started pulling off the tie around her neck. "Do you know what this is? It’s a collar." She said and finally took it off. "I’m taking it off right now and handing it back to you. I’m done."

Her father could not understand her sudden actions.

He glared at her also while trying to understand where she was getting at. And then she said,

"There was love in our family, father. Freedom." She said, "But All that was gone when Mom died and it was you. It was all you. You took them all away and for what? I will never know it to this day. I understand her passing hurt you but did you stop to think we were hurting as well?"

"Her loss was painful, and I knew your children would need someone to take care of you, so..."

"So you remarried right away. Right." She licked her lips and shook her head in disbelief. "You remarried and brought a witch into our home and you did not even know it."

"How dare you insult your late stepmother?" He banged his cane to the floor. "She tried all she could to take care of you, who were not her children, with all the love she had."

"Ah, yes." She gave out a sarcastic laugh. "That woman who would lock us in the attic when you were away. That same woman would strike our heels each time we made a slight mistake. She would make us stand upright with our hands raised above our heads. She would..." She felt tears whelming up in her eyes as her heart grew heavy in her chest. "...make us kneel for hours on an empty stomach and only start feeding us properly when it is almost time for you to return. What did we do wrong to her? I will never know to this day. But I, as well as Alejandro, knew we had committed no such crimes to deserve those punishments. We were innocent, father! We were innocent, but she did that to us, and you call that ’with all the love she had’? It weakens my heart that even when we tried to tell you that we did not like her and were scared of her, you chose to ignore our cries, taking them as childish and spoiled words. You chose that woman over us. We were your children, for crying out loud."

Tears that had been whelming up in my heart finally rolled down.

These things had been kept in her heart for forty years. Forty crazy years and she never dared to bring it up. She never had the nerves or the strength and hoped her father would finally give her the warmth that he once had.

"Allegra Barone, what are you saying right now?" Her father asked, disbelief and grief whelming up in his face.

"The truth, father." She answered. "So you want to know how stepmother Lorina died?"

"She slipped on the stairs and broke her neck." He said, but Allegra shook her head.

"No, that was what the maids who had benefited a lot from her hush money wanted you to believe." She said. "That day, Alejandro picked up a piece of bread from the kitchen but was caught by the maid. She reported that a load of bread was missing from the kitchen to that woman and she got her cane, the one you never got to set your eyes on. She knew for a fact that it was either of us and to protect Alejandro, I lied that I took it."

The memory of that day was loud and messy and everything happened so fast.

"She held me by the stairs, whipping my legs countlessly till I bled, telling me that it was punishment for kids who stole, but what did she expect from us when she caused us to starve for two days? I didn’t even have the strength to cry, Father. I had no strength to plead for her to stop either and even in my weakened state, that woman did not stop. I was 16 yet I was being punished as if I were a real thief. It was my father’s house; couldn’t I at least have a load to eat, if not a bowl of stew? My brother and I became beggars in our own father’s house. Remarkable, isn’t it?"

And in a rather soft voice, he called her name,

"Allegra Barone."

(Gosh, I have a thing for giving bad traumas to people. Help. Like, Allegra also had trauma? I mean, come on. I need to repent)

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