The Day My Survival Score Reached Zero Chapter 09
“She was supposed to be loved.”
The words hit harder than any blow.
Dante looked down at my face, and for the first time in all these years, my brother looked truly afraid.
“Bella,” he whispered. “Open your eyes.”
But I could not.
No matter how badly he wanted it now, it was already too late.
For a moment, Dante looked like he might collapse.
His eyes were red, and his hand hovered near my face, but he did not dare touch me.
Luca held my body and looked at him coldly.
“You didn’t protect her. You locked her away until she had no room left to breathe.”
Dante’s voice was hoarse. “I was trying to keep her alive.”
“You were trying to quiet your guilt.”
Dante said nothing.
In the end, Luca brought me back to the Bellandi house.
Mother fainted the moment she saw my body. Doctors rushed her upstairs, and I followed without thinking, even though no one could see me anymore.
She kept calling my name.
I wanted to tell her I was sorry, but I could not touch her, could not wake her, could not stay with her the way she had stayed with
I was never meant to belong to this world forever.
When I returned downstairs, Dante was kneeling beside my body.
“Bella,” he whispered. “Wake up.”
I had wanted him to care for so many years.
Now I only felt tired.
Julian arrived next.
He stopped at the door, face drained of color. The man who had always been calm in blood and chaos suddenly looked like he had forgotten how to breathe.
Luca looked at him. “You knew she was sick.”
Julian’s hands trembled.
“I knew.”
“And you still called it an act.”
Julian closed his eyes.
Adrian came last.
He still wore the wrinkled black suit from the wedding. When he saw me, disbelief crossed his face first.
“Isabella,” he said, forcing a broken laugh. “Enough. This isn’t funny.”
No one answered.
He took one step closer, as if he still expected me to open my eyes and prove this was another performance. But when he saw my still hand against the white sheet, the laugh vanished.
“She’s not…”
“She is,” Luca said.
Adrian went silent.
Luca placed a small drive on the table.
“You still think Sophia is innocent? Watch.”
The screen lit up.
It was not Sophia’s edited footage.
It was the original.
Sophia stood in a private room with two media fixers, her voice clear.
“Make Isabella Bellandi look unstable. Jealous. Dangerous. I want every account in Chicago saying she threatened me with the Bellandi name.”
One man asked, “And the security clips?”
“Cut them,” Sophia said. “Leave out the part where I followed her first.”
The footage changed.
Payment records.
Fake message drafts.
Anonymous gossip accounts.
A clip of Sophia practicing tears before entering Julian’s office.
Then another file opened.
The dockside explosion.
The footage was grainy, but clear enough to show Sophia opening the restricted gate she had sworn she never touched.
My chest tightened, though I no longer had a body that could hurt.
So that was why I had died in the first place.
So that was why I had been dragged into this world.
Dante’s face turned gray.
Julian gripped the table.
Adrian stepped back as if the floor had shifted beneath him.
Luca looked at them one by one.
“She told you Sophia framed her. She told you the messages were fake. She told you she was the one being ruined.”
His voice turned colder.
“But Sophia cried, and that was enough for all of you.”
No one spoke.
Because they remembered.
Dante had called me a disgrace.
Palian had called my depression convenient.
Adrian had told me not to threaten them with death.
And every time I explained, they only hated me more.
Luca’s gaze swept over them.
*Sophia pushed her toward death, but every one of you helped close the door.”
Dante turned toward my body and sank fully to his knees.
“Bella,” he said, voice breaking. “I didn’t know.”
Luca’s voice was flat.
“She told you.”
Dante froze.
“She told all of you.”
Julian lowered his head.
Adrian stared at my hand as if the ring he had given Sophia had suddenly burned through his own.
And I stood beside them, watching the truth arrive too late.
