CHAPTER 96: †BEAUTIFUL†

Chapter 96

KATYA POV

Nonna didn’t let go. Not when my sobs turned ugly, not when the words dried up and silence swallowed the room.

I don’t know how long we stayed like that — her holding me, me falling apart piece by piece. She just sat there.

"You’re not cursed, Katya."

That was the first thing she said since I’d broken down. Her voice was soft but firm as she brushed damp strands of hair from my face.

"Oh, cara mia..." she whispered after a while, voice trembling like she was the one holding back tears. "You’ve carried so much alone."

I shook my head, I didn’t want her trying to say craps like, your going to be ok and shit because it never gets ok but she only tightened her hold.

"Life has been so unfair to you, and yet you’re still here. Still standing. That doesn’t make you cursed. It makes you human. It makes you stronger than you realize."

The words cracked something open, and I broke down all over again.

For a while, neither of us spoke. Only my uneven breathing filled the room, and the steady weight of her hand anchoring me to the present.

Then she sighed heavy, filled with regret. "Hearing all this..." she began quietly, "it makes me ashamed. Ashamed that my blood had any part in the pain you’ve endured."

Her gaze lingered on me, softer than I’d ever seen it. "But pain... pain has a way of weaving through every family, every generation. And sometimes the only way to understand it — to survive it — is to know where it began."

Nonna didn’t let go. "You’re not cursed, Katya," she whispered again, as if saying it enough times might make me believe it.

"I know pain doesn’t feel fair. It isn’t. But... it has a way of binding us. It shapes us. Sometimes it even repeats itself in the people we raise."

I frowned, unsure where she was going with this. She sighed, her thumb brushing slow, steady circles against the back of my hand.

"I was younger than you when I learned that lesson. And... I think it’s only fair you knew a little more about me too."

My chest tightened. I didn’t know if I wanted to hear it. I didn’t want a sob story because I said mine.

"I wasn’t always Nonna," she said with a tired smile that didn’t reach her eyes. "Once, I was just a mistake. A shameful secret born from a powerful man and the maid he ruined. My father despised me. His wife despised me more. And I learned very early that my worth was something I had to earn — or accept I’d never have."

"Do you know what it means to be born as someone’s shame, cara mia?" Nonna whispered, her eyes lost somewhere far beyond the room.

"I was. My mother was a maid — sweet, gentle, far too good for the man who ruined her life. My father... he had a wife, a family, a name drenched in wealth and power. I was the stain he tried to hide."

"They never let me forget it. I was never called daughter — only mistake. I ate from chipped plates while my half-siblings dined on gold. They looked at me as though I was dirt beneath their shoes, and I believed them."

Why was she telling me all this?

"When I turned eighteen, they got rid of me the only way they knew how — by selling me like a business deal. I was married off to a man I didn’t know. A don. Romeo’s grandfather. He gave me a house but never a home, respect but never love. He filled his bed with other women while I learned to sleep beside an empty heart."

"Then... then my son was born." Her voice trembled, a tiny smile flickering through the pain. "Mio figlio... he was everything. My light. My reason. I told myself, ’It doesn’t matter if the world despises you. He will love you.’ And he did."

"But happiness in our world doesn’t last. When my husband died in an ambush, they came for my son. My sweet, gentle boy. They said he had to become strong — a leader, a weapon. I watched as they broke him piece by piece, carving away the laughter, the softness... until only steel remained."

Her hands shook slightly as she spoke, her voice now barely above a whisper. "Every night, I would hold his face and beg him, ’Don’t let them take your heart. Don’t let them kill the kindness inside you.’ And he would smile and say, ’I won’t, Mama.’ But the world is cruel, Katya. It kills good men first."

"When they took his life... they didn’t just kill my son. They killed the last living part of me. I wanted to die too. But I couldn’t. Because there was another bundle of joy I had to take care of — Romeo."

Tears welled in her eyes now, falling freely as she continued and I sobbed with her. "He was still young, barely fifteen, so small, yet already carrying storms too heavy for his age. He had his father’s eyes... and the same storms brewing behind them. I swore I would protect him, but I was already too late. The moment his father died, something in him died too, a happy child before turned quiet . And that little boy I used to rock to sleep... he never came back."

She reached out, gently taking my hand. "I am not telling you this to defend him. I know what he’s done — and I would never ask you to forgive it. I only want you to understand, amore mio, that behind every monster is a child who was broken before they knew how to be anything else."

I wanted to say I didn’t care about her past. That it didn’t make up for his. But the way her voice cracked around the word ’son’ made something in me ache

She wiped her tears, sniffing quietly. "All I’m saying, cara mia, is that you are not cursed. Look at what you’ve endured — and yet here you are, still standing, still beautiful. Not broken. Not ruined. Beautiful. I believe you about your father. And Ivan. And I promise you this: we will find out what happened to your friend Aria. You’re not alone anymore."

††

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