Double Betrayal, Broken Donna Chapter 02
Rocco left with Teresa. The memories hit me the second I was alone.
Teresa and I went way back — best friends since we were kids.
When we were seventeen, her dad died. Her mom remarried fast and dragged Teresa into someone else’s family.
It didn’t take long before Teresa started coming apart. She’d call me sobbing, telling me her stepbrother was making her life hell.
She had nowhere else to turn. So I kept showing up — stayed over whenever I could.
Then came her birthday.
I’d been saving for weeks to buy her a dress she’d had her eye on. I brought it over, had a drink she handed me at her place, and everything after that went black.
When I came to, all I could feel was pain — pain everywhere.
Teresa was holding me, sobbing, screaming at her stepbrother — Lucius Caldwell.
But it wasn’t over.
I was ready to let go — ready to be done with all of it. Then I found out I was pregnant.
My parents smuggled me out of state. The abortion, the move, the fresh start — they did everything they could to piece me back together.
But some damage doesn’t heal just because time keeps passing.
Rocco found me when I was still at my worst — barely holding on, second-guessing every move I made.
He had this way of looking at me — soft, steady — and then he’d smile and pinch my cheek like I was something fragile and precious.
“What’s got you so sad all the time?” he’d ask.
I’d look into those bright eyes and want so badly to trust him. But I couldn’t — not yet.
Every time I pulled away, he came right back. He always reached for my hand.
It doesn’t matter, he’d say. None of that was your fault.
Slowly, he became the safest place I’d ever known. I stopped flinching. I let him in.
The night he put his ring on my finger, he held my face and said it straight: I’ll protect you. For the rest of your life.
Through every stage — dating, engagement, marriage — he never wavered. He gave me everything and never tried to take anything from me.
And now all of it was ash.
Fat, heavy tears rolled down my face.
I thought I’d rebuilt myself from nothing. And the two people I trusted most had just ripped me open along every old scar.
They weren’t done, either. They just kept grinding the salt in.
At some point, the pain burned so white-hot it numbed itself out. My head cleared.
I cried until my lungs gave out. Until there was nothing left to feel.
My phone buzzed. I could barely see the screen — my eyes were so swollen I could hardly keep them open.
Rocco and Teresa.
[Camelia, go pick up some prenatal vitamins.]
[We got a little carried away. Hope we didn’t stress the baby out.]
Below the texts, Teresa had sent a photo. She and Rocco, skin against skin.
I stared at it until I forgot how to breathe.
Then the phone screamed.
His voice poured through the speaker, thick with satisfaction.
“You saw the picture?” he asked.
Every word I forced out shook coming up.
“You’re not afraid of me, Rocco? You should be. Keep pushing me — I’ll kill you both.”
Silence on the line.
Then Teresa’s laugh drifted through — light, easy, unbothered.
“Camelia, please. You fall apart if someone looks at you the wrong way. You don’t have it in you.”
“Then again — you’ve done it before, haven’t you? You got rid of Lucius’s bastard.”
“But you’d never touch this one. Not an heir to the Family. You don’t have the nerve.”
She told me to hurry up with the vitamins and hung up.
A laugh scraped its way out of me. She was so sure of herself. So goddamn sure.
Loud sounds had had a hold on me ever since that night — Lucius’s laughter echoed through every raised voice, every slammed door. The therapists had a word for it. I just knew it never stopped.
But right now I wasn’t afraid of anything. Not even dying.
And I wasn’t about to let them walk away clean.
I went after them.
The door swung open to clothes scattered across the floor. Rocco and Teresa were tangled together on the couch, mouths fused together.
The slick, wet sound of it filled the room and crawled under my skin.
I tightened my grip on the phone and closed the distance. One step. Then another.
Teresa spotted me. She moaned louder — deliberate, performative, her eyes never leaving mine.
Then — because apparently the cruelty still wasn’t enough — she brought up that year.
“The first time I caught Camelia with Lucius? They were on my bed, just like this — putting on quite a show.”
My hand shook. She was rewriting what happened to me without a flicker of guilt.
Hatred flooded my bloodstream like venom. The last thread of restraint in me snapped clean.
I raised my phone. The camera caught their flushed, glazed faces dead-on.
I swallowed my tears and forced my mouth into something sharp enough to pass for a smile.
I looked straight into the lens and let my voice go dead.
“Welcome to the show, everyone. The great Don and my best friend — live and unfiltered. Go ahead, you two. Don’t stop on my account.”