Chapter 147: Why did you lie to me?
Selena felt the wind knocked out of her lungs. A sudden, hollow sensation filled her stomach, a terrifying emptiness. It was as if a part of her had been irrevocably lost.
"He is gone so easily!" she mumbled with disbelief.
"He was a heavy drunkard," Bella reasoned. Who knows what ailments he was suffering from? He...never mentioned anything about his health issues."
Selena’s voice turned cold as she replied, "It’s good he is gone. We are finally free from his torture. We can...have a peaceful life." Despite her efforts to maintain a facade of indifference, she couldn’t stop her lower lip from trembling.
No matter how hard she tried to hide her pain, Bella could see everything. Her own heart ached with the loss, and she pulled her mother into a tight embrace.
"It’s okay, Mamma," she murmured. "You don’t have to pretend to be unaffected. I know it hurts, even if we hated him. Don’t suppress your pain. Let it go. He was still a family, no matter how he was."
Selena clung to her, finally allowing the tears she had held back to flow. The memories of the past swirled in her mind. She relived moments of Lionel’s contradictory nature—the man who had once been her savior, only to become her tormentor.
His help, his support, and even his care had all been tainted by the cruelty and accusations that had followed. Each memory stung, and the tears she shed were as much for the lost possibilities as for the pain he had inflicted.
Selena had never been able to call Lionel a good man, yet she couldn’t entirely dismiss the role he had played in her life. He had been there when no one else was when she had been left alone to raise Bella.
Perhaps, she mused bitterly, things could have turned out differently if she hadn’t fallen for the wrong man—the one who had abandoned her when she needed him most. Maybe, if she had accepted Lionel’s proposal instead of clinging to a love that had betrayed her, things between them might have been different.