I Was His Precious Until She Came Back Chapter 01
When I was eighteen, my brothers, the two Dons of the Valenti family, adopted another sister.
That was when they started treating their slow-witted biological sister like an unwanted burden.
If Clara’s limited-edition painting was stained, they blamed me.
If Clara so much as developed a cold, they decided I had caused it.
Years later, Clara was kidnapped by a rival family.
My brothers finally collapsed under the pressure and turned their desperate eyes toward me:
“Lucia, we’re begging you. Will you die in Clara’s place?”
I looked up at their red-rimmed eyes and answered:
“Okay.”
That night, I secretly slipped away and traded myself for Clara.
The kidnappers threw me into the ocean.
I thought I would die, but I survived and met Matteo Ferraro.
He never made me feel ashamed of my limited mind and treated me like something precious.
To everyone in the Ferraro family, I was the woman Matteo guarded as the most precious part of his life.
I believed he was different from my brothers.
Then, on a rainy night six years later, Matteo carried a young woman into the house.
I heard she was his first love, the woman who had sent him to prison and then fled overseas.
…
I did not understand what her return meant or know why everyone watched me with sympathy and quiet sorrow.
Seeing both of them soaked, I hurried over with a towel.
“Dry… cold… medicine tastes bad…”
Someone struck my hand away, and the towel fell.
Matteo had never once lost his temper with me in six years, yet his eyes were cold and vicious now.
“Get away from her,” he warned. “Don’t touch her!”
Stunned, I touched the blood on the back of my hand and looked at Matteo, whose entire world seemed to be the woman in his arms.
I wondered if another family was already preparing to leave me behind.
The private medical team, alerted in advance, rushed into the room.
By habit, they surrounded me at once, their familiar concern focused entirely on my injury.
One doctor bent to bandage my hand, but Matteo shouted:
“Are you all blind, crowding around that idiot when I called you to treat Amelia?”
The doctors froze, and so did the servants watching from a distance.
For the past six years, no one at the Ferraro estate had dared call me an idiot.
Matteo had always reacted with terrifying fury whenever that insult was directed at me.
One servant once treated me kindly in front of him but cursed me whenever his back was turned.
She called me a shameless, stupid parasite.
She said I clung to Matteo and occupied the position of Donna, making people in the business world mock him.
During that time, she repeatedly hurt my arms and legs beneath my clothes, laying new wounds over old ones.
I never told Matteo.
I feared he would grab a knife and fight someone, as he had when we lived on the streets.
Getting hurt was painful.
I did not want Matteo in pain or accused of being unstable because of me.
Even when my injuries left me unable to eat and awake through the night, I endured them.
Matteo eventually discovered the wounds, erupted in fury, and immediately removed the servant.
That night, however, he held me and sobbed until his voice broke.
“Lucia, don’t hide something like this from me again, okay?”
“Don’t be this cruel. Don’t shut me out of your world.”
“Please try to trust me a little more.”
His tears looked familiar, and I reached up in confusion to wipe them away.
“Don’t cry; it’s Lucia’s fault, and I’ll do better…”
Matteo stiffened, then tightened his arms around me.
“Lucia, I’m Matteo, not one of your brothers. You confused us again.”
I returned to myself, lowered my head in shame, and offered the apology I knew by heart. “I’m sorry.”
He held me all night, quietly sulking because I had mistaken him for my brother and hidden my injuries.
The next morning, he still cooked breakfast, woke me on schedule, and washed my face.
He even hired a professional medical team to live at the Ferraro estate and oversee my treatment.
He replaced every servant and personally interviewed each new employee.
The doctors and staff remembered exactly how fiercely Matteo valued and protected me.
None of them could believe that six years later, the first person to call me an idiot would be Matteo.
He had once seemed like the perfect husband, protecting me so carefully that no harm could reach me.
Their shock lasted only a moment.
The Ferraro estate belonged entirely to Matteo, and his word was law.
Now Amelia mattered, so the doctors abandoned me and turned to her.
I blew gently on my throbbing hand and watched a scene that felt strangely familiar.
My nose stung, and heat gathered behind my eyes.
It looked exactly the same.
It was just like the days when my brothers revolved around their adopted sister, Clara.
They never saw the burn on my leg or the tears in my eyes.
They only looked exhausted and angry as they asked why I could not be sensible for once and stop burdening them.
