After I Died, My Biased Father Went Crazy

The day I left San Nidevoid, everyone clapped and cheered. It was a celebration for the city. The "Mad Daughter" of the Corleone family would finally stop monopolizing the front pages of the tabloids in this City of Sin.

Three years passed before I made the headlines again.

My return to San Nidevoid wasn't marked by a grand homecoming. Instead, the first thing I did was visit the cemetery. It was there, among the silent headstones, that I ran into my brother, Luca, the heir to the Corleone empire and the future Godfather.

He looked at me and asked, "Why haven't you come home all these years?"

I tightened my grip on the cancer diagnosis hidden in my hand and offered a faint smile. "I'll be going home very soon."

...

I never expected my reunion with Luca to be so mundane. The sharp, bitter edges that used to define our relationship seemed to have dulled. Three years ago, we were the most famous siblings in the San Nidevoid rags, known primarily for our mutual loathing.

"When did you get back?" Luca asked. He was holding a bouquet of white roses, our mother's favorite. For a moment, the sight of them made my mind go blank.

"Yesterday," I replied.

"Yesterday was the Godfather's birthday." His voice was as cold as I remembered, cutting through the cemetery air. "Since you were back, why didn't you show up?"

"Because I didn't want to."

Luca's brow furrowed as his eyes searched my face. "Ella, are you still holding a grudge against us?"

I shook my head gently. Grudge? No. Since the day I was forced out of San Nidevoid, I had lost the capacity to hate anyone here. I simply knew my father wouldn't have wanted to see me at his celebration. Like Luca, he considered me a criminal. In their eyes, I was the one who killed my mother.

On my eighth birthday, I insisted on getting a cream cake from a specific bakery. Because of that childish whim, my mother drove out alone. She fell into a trap set by a rival family and was brutally tortured to death.

I still remembered my father holding her lifeless body. That man, who never showed a hint of weakness, wept like a broken child. Luca knelt on the ground, his eyes bloodshot with rage, screaming at me to get out of his sight.

That day, my father lost his beloved wife. Luca lost his mother. The family lost its gentlest Godmother. In exchange, they withdrew every ounce of warmth they had ever given me. They began to hate.

Luca's expression shifted. His gaze became complicated. He looked like he wanted to say something. Then he spoke up. "Ella. You seem... different. You've become too quiet."

I smiled. Maybe I had changed. It was because I no longer harbored any delusions about "family."

Shortly after my mother died, they brought Sophia into our home. She was an orphan my mother had sponsored for years. They never gave her the cold shoulder. They never ignored her. They certainly never told her to get lost. Stung by that blatant double standard, I had spent my youth being hysterical, loud, and combative. I was too young to understand why my own father and brother hated me so much. By the time I finally understood, my wrists were already crisscrossed with self-inflicted scars.

Back then, I couldn't stop fighting them. At the very least, my defiance forced them to look at me.

A light breeze caught the hem of my sleeve, revealing those old, ugly scars. In the face of my silence, Luca finally spoke.

"Come home with me."

I stared at the tips of my shoes. Was there a place for me in that "home"? Over the years, even the San Nidevoid newspapers had begun referring to Sophia as the "Daughter of the Corleone Family." My name had been blacklisted by the media long ago. To the public, I was a madwoman.

The story everyone believed was that I, fueled by jealousy, had spent years humiliating Sophia at family galas. It culminated in a final, insane act where I supposedly handed her over to a rival gang to be tortured.

When Luca arrived at the scene and found the dying, broken Sophia, he slapped me across the face. We had hurled the most vicious curses at each other in the past, but he had never laid a hand on me until that moment.

"Ella, have you lost your mind?" he had roared. "How can you be so vicious?"

The sound of that slap drowned out my weak defense. "It wasn't me..."

He didn't believe me. He watched as Sophia recoiled in feigned terror, sobbing as she pointed her finger at me. "Ella, I was wrong. I'll never try to compete with you again. Please, don't do this to me again..."

My father didn't believe me either when he arrived moments later. He demanded I kneel and apologize to Sophia. When I refused, he didn't hesitate. He pulled the trigger, sending a bullet through my shoulder.

My blood soaked into the expensive carpet, but no one spared me a glance. To "avenge" Sophia, they had me committed to a locked asylum owned by one of our family's associates. When I was released six months later, my father treated me like I was a ghost that didn't belong in this world. Luca looked at me as if I were a stranger and a criminal.

"I don't have a daughter like you."

"My only sister is Sophia."

That was what they said to me back then.

I didn't have a home. I hadn't had one for a very long time.