Too Late, My Regretful Don Chapter 01
Five years after the divorce, I ran into my ex-husband, Renato Valenti, the Don of Naples, at the hospital.
He was there supporting his wife, who was nine months pregnant, for a checkup.
I was there for chemotherapy, terminally ill with cancer, so thin I was nothing but skin and bones.
After all those years apart, our eyes met.
I looked away, turned in silence, and walked off.
But as we passed each other, Renato grabbed my wrist. His eyes burned, and his voice came out low and rough.
“Are you still blaming me for what happened to Tommaso…?”
I stared at my gaunt reflection in the glass and said nothing.
Back then, after I lost the baby, I went crazy. I exposed his affair to the world, carved humiliating words into that bitch Rosa Marino’s face and he locked me up in the Valenti family’s harshest “reformatory” to teach me a lesson.
What he didn’t know was that his inconvenient Donna was being tortured to death.
The infirmary was a mess.
Renato’s eyes were dark with lust as he pinned Rosa by the waist and kissed her hard.
Her cheeks flushed. “Don’t… not here…”
His lips swallowed the rest of her words.
They clung to each other, their hot breath fogging the glass, leaving handprints behind.
I couldn’t help clenching my fingers. A small, sharp pain pricked my heart.
I was about to leave when a familiar male voice came from behind me.
“Giulia?”
I turned and paused. “Don.”
Years had passed. The youthfulness was gone from his face, replaced by sharp brows and a cool, refined elegance in his black suit.
Renato noticed my distance. His hand hovered in the air, then dropped.
His expression was unreadable.
“Where have you been all these years?”
“I turned this whole city upside down looking for you. I couldn’t find you anywhere. Then they showed me your ashes, your picture, that’s when I finally let go and married Rosa.”
I dropped my gaze and stayed silent.
Renato looked at my hollowed cheeks. The words caught in his throat, and his voice came out hoarse.
“It’s been five years. You’ve lost so much weight.”
“What really happened after they locked you up in that reformatory?”
Hearing that, my fingers tightened around my phone.
Whips. Electric shocks. Boiling hot water poured down my throat…
Those memories were nothing but nightmares.
Even though I’d escaped six months ago, thinking about them still made my heart race and my body tremble uncontrollably.
Renato’s eyes flickered as he watched my trembling lips. He was about to speak.
Then a sweet, gentle voice rang out. “Honey, who are you talking to?”
I froze, then looked up.
Rosa was holding her pregnant belly, her face rosy and healthy. The rumpled clothes from earlier had been straightened out.
The bitch who used to bully me was now the head specialist at this very hospital.
She’d married my ex-husband, her own adoptive brother, and he’d spoiled her rotten. She was already pregnant with their second child.
“Giulia DeLuca?”
Rosa looked me up and down, then gasped, covering her mouth.
“Oh my god. It really is you… I almost didn’t recognize you.”
“Back then? You were Renato’s spoiled little Donna. Prettier than a movie star. Now look at you, all shriveled up. It’s a terrible look. You seriously look like you’re about to die.”
In the reflection of the glass, I was nothing but skin and bones, my face a terrifying shade of pale.
My voice came out so soft I could barely hear it myself.
“I really am about to die.”
Hearing that, Renato’s brow furrowed deeply. His gaze locked onto the blood seeping through my sleeve.
On my wrist, a dense, ugly mass of fresh cut marks was visible. The newest ones were still bleeding, staining the gauze red.
“Your wrist…”
I looked down and casually pulled my sleeve back down.
During those hardest years, I’d gone through my husband’s cheating, my stepsister’s scheming, and then a terminal cancer diagnosis.
Every day I woke up with the same thought,
Why am I still alive?
In that unbearable suffering, I tried overdosing, jumping off buildings, slitting my wrists…
But every time, they cruelly brought me back.
Before I could say anything.
Rosa bit her lip and put on a pitiful face.
“Giulia, I know you’re still pissed at me.”
“If it weren’t for me, you’d still be head of gynecology. Your mom wouldn’t have disowned you. And Renato never would’ve divorced you and made me his Donna.”
