Chapter 83 The Scar That Broke the Silence!

Chapter 83 The Scar That Broke the Silence!
Saintilia POV

The devastation ran so deep because they were the ones I was supposed to rely on, the anchors in my storm. Instead, it felt as if they had untied the ropes and watched me drift into the abyss. They turned against me, not always with open cruelty, but with silence, secrecy, and choices that left me alone with the damage.

But the deepest pain, the sharpest shard of glass in my heart, came from the man I had once admired.
The man I believed in, the man Jonas himself had trusted to watch over me.

I remembered Jacob from my childhood with painful clarity. The day I fell and scraped my knees raw on the gravel path, he was the one who gently sat me down. His voice had been low and soothing as he cleaned the dirt from my skin and tended to my injuries with such care. His touch then had been so different from the one I had just witnessed. Gentle. Careful. Almost fatherly.

He was the man who greeted me with a smile so warm it felt like sunlight breaking through clouds. The man who called me “Titi” with an affection that once made me feel seen and cherished.

And now that memory felt poisoned.

This revelation shook me to my foundation. I struggled to accept that Jacob was that man. How could the same hands that once cleaned my scrapes be the hands that harmed me, the hands that gripped Celia’s throat, while the scar I left on his arm became the proof of what he had done?

Had it all been a lie?

A performance?
Or had there always been something hidden beneath his kindness, something Jonas never saw?

The thought was too monstrous to hold, yet too real to dismiss. And as the truth settled over me, cold and heavy, I understood that the past had not returned to haunt me.
It had returned to name itself.

Today, Emilio was gone.
He left town without explaining much. He only told me to make food for myself and said he would return late. His absence left the house strangely quiet, and for the first time in a long while, I felt a dangerous kind of freedom.

Then came my chance to go to Jacob’s house. I could face him in front of Celia and force the truth into the open. But one thought kept troubling me. What if Celia already knew? What if she had known the truth and chosen silence?

The thought sat in my stomach like ice.

As the late afternoon sun stretched long shadows across the village, I stopped at Tina’s place before heading to Jacob’s. But Tina was not there. Her absence left me uneasy, and for a moment, I wondered if she and Emilio were somewhere together. Still, their business was not mine to chase. I had my own storm to walk into.

Next, I went to see Adeline. It had been far too long, and guilt pressed on me with every step. But when I arrived, her neighbor told me Adeline had been gone for a while, staying with family outside Boudins.

The news unsettled me more than I expected. If Adeline had been here, Tina would never have moved so easily around me. She would have questioned everything, watched everyone, and stood in the way of anything that smelled wrong.

Part of me wondered if that was a blessing. Adeline would have carried this truth like fire. She would have wanted answers, justice, blood if necessary. Her rage might have scared even me.

I wondered if Tina knew Adeline was gone. If she did, she had never mentioned it.

Either way, the truth was clear.
I had no one.
No one to stand beside me. No one to hold my hand. No one to steady me before I walked into Jacob’s house and faced the man who had destroyed me.

I had finally accepted the truth that Jacob was the man who raped me.

The thought was no longer a hazy suspicion. It was solid now, terrible and fixed inside me. He would likely deny it. Men like him always denied what they could not afford to face. But there was evidence. The scar. My memory. The scent of him that had returned from the darkest corner of my mind.

What troubled me most was Celia.

Would she look at me with pity? Or would she look at me with anger for breaking open the world she had worked so hard to keep together? I did not know. But my purpose was clear. I had come to confront Jacob, to demand answers, and to see the look in his eyes when he realized I remembered.

As I neared Celia’s house, anger rose inside me, hot and sharp. It burned through my fear and left behind a cold, hard resolve. I forced myself to stay calm. I could not face him as a trembling victim. I had to face him as an accuser.

He was no longer the man I had once looked up to like a father. He was the man I hated with every fiber of my being.

I could not help wondering if my relationship with Celia would survive what I was about to do. Only time would answer that. I had no illusions that things would remain the same after this. Walking toward her door felt like crossing a line I could never step back from.

In the courtyard, Celia greeted me with a genuine smile. I could sense her gratitude for what I had done for her a few nights before. Her smile twisted in my heart like a knife.

I returned it, knowing that what I was about to say might break whatever remained between us. I was prepared for her to stand by her husband.

I was prepared to lose her too.

“Titi, what brings you here?” Jacob asked.
His usual smile was plastered on his face, practiced and warm, and it made my stomach turn. It was as if nothing had happened, as if he had not nearly choked his wife in front of me only days ago.

“I am here for you, Jacob.”
My voice was steady, even though a hurricane was raging inside me.

“What’s wrong, Saint? Is everything okay?” Celia asked, her brow creased with concern.
Her concern should have comforted me. Instead, it felt like another betrayal.

“Celia, everything is perfectly fine,” I said.

But the rush of anger and fear in my body made the words come out sharper than I intended. The lie tasted like ash in my mouth. I took a breath and locked my eyes on Jacob, the man who had lived inside my nightmares for three years.

“Why did you do what you did three years ago, Jacob?”
The question came out before I could soften it. It had been clawing its way up my throat for too long.

The moment the words left my mouth, Jacob's attitude changed.
His smile disappeared. His face fell. His eyes widened with naked surprise, and in that one unguarded second, I had my answer.

Continue..........