His Ruthless Redemption (Isabella and Dominic) novel Chapter 255

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Chapter 255

Isabella’s POV

Some people say time heals everything.

I don’t think that’s true.

Time doesn’t erase grief.

It doesn’t rewrite the past or undo the choices that changed you forever.

What it does do is teach you how to live around the scars. How to smile without feeling guilty. How to lau without waiting for the next disaster to steal the moment away. How to wake up every morning and choos happiness over fear.

It had been four years since we left Italy.

Four years since I had watched the love of my life choose me over everything he had ever known.

Four years since we had driven away from the only lives we’d ever lived.

And every single day since then, I had thanked God for that choice.

“Mama!” A little voice echoed through the house. “Mama! Leo cheated!”

“I did not!”

“You did!”

“I did not!”

I smiled before I even looked up from my sketchbook.

Some things, it seemed, were universal.

Children would always accuse each other of cheating, regardless of which country they lived in.

I stepped out onto the back patio to find Mateo standing with his hands dramatically planted on his hips while his little brother giggled from the swing Dominic had built for them the previous summer.

Leo.

Our miracle.

The little boy I hadn’t known my heart had been waiting for.

He had Dominic’s dark hair, my eyes, and an infectious laugh that somehow managed to brighten every room

he entered.

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Dominic claimed he’d inherited my stubbornness.

I insisted he’d inherited his father’s talent for causing trouble.

“Papa!” Mateo called the moment he spotted Dominic walking across the garden carrying two bowls of fresh picked strawberries. Some days it still felt surreal hearing Mateo call Dominic his father. But he had started doing that all on his own once we had enrolled him in school here. Dominic had been over the moon when that had happened.

“Leo cheated,” Mateo announced dramatically, pointing at his younger brother.

Dominic looked between the two boys with exaggerated seriousness. “This sounds like a matter requiring a full investigation.”

Leo squealed happily. Mateo sighed in the dramatic way only nine-year-olds seemed capable of. “I knew you’d take his side.”

“I haven’t taken anyone’s side.”

“You will.”

Dominic crouched in front of them. “I merely require testimony from all witnesses.”

I laughed quietly, watching him like this still felt surreal sometimes.

The man who had once commanded an empire with a single glance now spent his mornings mediating arguments over garden games and missing strawberries.

He looked happier doing this than he ever had sitting behind his enormous desk back in Italy.

He caught me watching him. “What?”

I smiled. “Nothing.”

His lips curved knowingly. “You’re smiling again.”

“I know.”

“You’ve been doing that a lot lately.”

“I have.”

“And I hope you never stop.”

Neither did I.

After lunch, while the boys disappeared outside again with Caterina, I curled up beside the window with a cup of tea and absentmindedly scrolled through the international news on my tablet.

Old habits died hard.

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Chapter 255

Italy still found its way into my headlines more often than I cared to admit.

A familiar name caught my attention. Salvatore.

I read the article quietly.

Another one of Salvatore’s companies had officially declared bankruptcy. His and Vittoria’s once untouchable empire had slowly unraveled over the years until almost nothing remained.

I smiled faintly to myself.

I had never asked Dominic whether he’d played a role in any of it. He had never volunteered the answer. Some questions didn’t need asking. But I knew he was punishing Vittoria for playing a part in Aspen’s death in his own way. Whatever had happened to her and Salvatore’s empire, it had happened quietly, legally.

And somehow, I suspected that for a woman like Vittoria, watching the world she’d once been proud of collapse piece by piece had been a far crueler punishment than anything else ever could’ve been.

Power had been her identity.

Without it, who was she?

The thought lingered with me long after I closed the article.

A few more headlines appeared beneath it.

One caught my eye immediately.

Renaissance Reborn Wins International Preservation Award.

A warm smile spread across my face.

The accompanying photograph showed Chiara standing proudly beside Luca as they accepted yet another award for the project we’d once poured so much of ourselves into.

Luca looked different now, older, calmer somehow. There was still sadness in his smile. Perhaps there always

would be.

But there was peace there too.

I hoped he’d found forgiveness.

Most of all, I hoped he’d forgiven himself.

More than once over the years, I’d been tempted to write to both of them. Just one message. Just enough to let them know I was alive, happy and safe. I knew Luca probably blamed himself for all our supposed deaths. I wanted to absolve him of that guilt.

But every single time I’d stopped.

To the world we’d left behind, Isabella Russo was gone.

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Bringing her back, even for a moment, would only invite questions that were better left unanswered.

Some acts of love were acts of letting go.

I whispered a quiet congratulations anyway before locking the screen.

Somewhere else in Italy, life had continued too.

Eduardo had become everything Dominic had believed he could be. The Russo family hadn’t merely survived. It had flourished under his leadership.

I never asked Dominic many questions whenever he occasionally disappeared into his study for a quiet phone call. He never offered many answers either. But every now and then, I’d hear Eduardo’s name spoken with unmistakable pride.

Those conversations had become fewer with each passing year.

Life had a wonderful way of creating distance when you finally allowed it to.

Maria, from what Dominic had told me through Eduardo, had remained in Milan with her son. That knowledge brought me more comfort than I expected. She deserved rest and stability after working for pretty much all her life for the Russos.

There was only one name I no longer flinched at reading.

Alessia Moretti.

Her death had dominated the news for weeks just like Dominic and mine had. There had been speculations, headlines, commentary before it was chalked up to a freak fire accident that had occurred when all of us had gone to the warehouse to check on some supplies.

Eventually, the world had moved on.

So had Alessia’s parents, the Morettis.

With Dominic supposedly dead, there had been no war to wage and no enemy left to chase, no one to blame for the death of their beloved daughter.

Revenge, of course, required someone willing to stand on the other side of it.

But according to them, the very reason their daughter was dead was gone, too.

“You’re thinking again.” Dominic’s voice pulled me gently back to the present.

I looked up to find him leaning casually against the doorway. “When am I not?”

He crossed the room before settling beside me on the sofa.

I curled instinctively against him.

Even after all these years, it still felt like coming home.

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Chapter 255

“What was it this time?”

“The past.”

He nodded knowingly. “And?”

I looked through the open patio doors.

55 vorichert

Mateo was helping Leo build something spectacularly crooked out of wooden blocks while Caterina pretended not to notice that both boys were secretly feeding scraps to the dog under the table.

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