The Mafia Princess Who Lived In A Bubble Chapter 08
The funeral was held in the Cattaneo family’s private chapel.
The service was simple and eerily quiet.
In the photograph, I smiled without a care, like an ordinary
girl who had never been locked in a sterile villa.
Dad stood before the portrait, his back hunched, as if he’d
aged ten years overnight.
He kept wiping the frame with a handkerchief, his touch as
gentle as if he were stroking my face.
Fiorella, Daddy bought you a new dress. Blue. Your favorite
color when you were little.”
As he spoke, tears fell drop by drop onto the memorial table.
Mom knelt in front of the crematorium door, gripping the
metal door, refusing to let the staff take me inside.
You can’t burn her. My Fiore is afraid of pain! After the
warehouse explosion, the thing she feared most was fire.
Please, don’t burn her.”
Her voice was already hoarse from crying, broken to the point
of being nearly unintelligible.
The staff could only look to Dad.
Dad walked over, pried Mom’s fingers off the door one by one,
and pulled her into his arms.
“Let her leave in peace. We’ve tormented her long enough.”
The crematorium door closed slowly.
When Mom saw the fire flare up, she let out a gut–wrenching
scream, then fainted in Dad’s arms.
I floated above the chapel, feeling not a trace of warmth.
Dad, Mom, Livia. Goodbye.”
I said my goodbye in a whisper, knowing they couldn’t hear me.
After the funeral, the Cattaneo family sank into a silence
more frightening than the eve of war.
Dad temporarily handed all his business and territory to
Renzo, canceled his meetings with the other Mafia families,
and stopped attending family councils.
The smaller families that had tried to test the boundaries
quickly backed off. Even though the Don never showed his
face, the guards and gunmen around the estate had doubled,
and no one dared provoke the Cattaneos while he was
grieving his daughter.
Dad moved into my room and spent every day staring
blankly at my toys and old clothes.
He never left the villa, numbing himself with alcohol through
the night. Sometimes he’d suddenly sit up and play the
recording of my last call over and over.
Tullio, the man in charge of the villa’s maintenance, came to
the family’s council chamber on his own to confess.
Several capos expected Dad to have his hands broken, and
were already prepared to drag him down to the basement.
But Dad only looked at him for a long time.
“Get out.”
“You have no right to atone for my sins.”
At that moment, everyone finally understood that the person
the Don most wanted to punish had never been one of his men.
It was himself.
Mom’s mind completely gave out.
She stayed up all night, wandering through the sterile villa,
filling the pantry with fresh food, then standing in the dining
room, talking to the air.
Fiorella, press the first button when you’re hungry and the
second when you’re thirsty. Mommy isn’t leaving this time.
I’m not going anywhere.”
She checked the circuit breakers, the generators, and the
water purification valve again and again, dozens of times a day.
Sometimes she would suddenly burst into Livia’s room and
drag her daughter out of bed.
“Livia, did Mommy kill Fiore? Tell me. Did I kill her?”
The questions made Livia tremble all over, and she could
only shake her head desperately.
She, too, was being tormented to the brink of collapse.
She didn’t dare leave the house. She didn’t dare look at her
phone. She couldn’t even face herself in the mirror.
Every time she closed her eyes, she saw me curled
the stinking table, watching her with hollow eyes.
I’m sorry…”
up beside She stayed curled in the corner of her bed all day, nervously
biting her fingers until deep teeth marks were left behind.
When the first cold wind of winter blew through Bellacosta,
the villa was colder inside than out.
Dad was drunk again.
He staggered out of my room, an empty bottle in his hand.
“Fiore… where is Daddy’s Fiore?”
Mom hadn’t slept in three days.
She sat at the pantry door, opening and closing it over and
over, reaching in every time to confirm it was still cold.
“It’s not broken.”
She took out the new meal trays one by one.
“Enough for five days. Six cartons of milk, four bottles of water.”
She counted them once, then counted again.
On the seventh count, Dad stood at the pantry door.
“What are you doing?”
Mom didn’t look up. She just put the meal trays back.
“I’m preparing food for Fiore.”
The bottle slipped from Dad’s hand and shattered on the tiles.
Fiore is gone.”
Mom’s hands stopped, and she knelt on the floor, trembling slightly.
“I know.”
Her voice was so faint it was almost swallowed by the wind.
But I can’t stop. The moment I stop, I think about her last
days, crouching by that serving hatch. Opening it, smelling
what was inside, and still forcing rotten food into her mouth.”
Mom’s fingers dug into the gaps between the tiles.
“She was so obedient, so good… After she got sick, she was
always in pain… but she kept bearing it…”
Dad stood motionless among the broken glass.
Livia’s door opened a crack.
Hidden behind it, she heard every word Mom said.
She hadn’t left her room in three days. Torn pieces of her
acceptance letter lay scattered on the floor, and the start of
the semester had long since passed.
The university had called a few times. She never answered.
Livia quietly closed the door, locked it again, slid down
against it to the floor, and pressed her hands hard over her ears.
But Mom’s voice still got through.
At the end, she was holding my coat. She died smelling me…”
Livia bit the back of her hand, leaving a neat row of teeth marks.
A few days later, because of her long–term insomnia and
refusal to eat, Mom was taken by the family doctor to a
private hospital owned by the Cattaneos.
Varenna said she had suffered a severe breakdown and
developed an eating disorder.
She refused to eat anything.
Dad shuttled between the hospital and the villa, wasting
away at a terrifying speed.
Livia kept herself locked in her room the whole time.
Late one night, Dad came back from the hospital and found the door open.
Livia stood by the window as cold wind poured in, her lips
already purple with cold,