Unexpected News

Sienna's POV

I had always imagined that if my mother, Elena, ever had life-changing news to share, she would deliver it with some grand, dramatic flair. She was the kind of woman who lived for the spotlight, always craving attention and theatrical moments. Instead, she chose to drop a massive bomb on me while sitting across from me at our tiny, cluttered kitchen table, casually sipping her chamomile tea as if she were merely announcing a minor change in the weather.

The morning light was weak, filtering through the grimy kitchen window and casting long, gray shadows across the worn floorboards. The stagnant air smelled faintly of stale coffee and burnt toast.

Her perfectly manicured acrylic nails, painted a delicate shade of blush pink, tapped rhythmically against her cheap porcelain teacup.

Then, she said it. The words hung in the air, suffocating me: she was getting married to Vittorio Castiglione.

For several long, agonizing seconds, my brain flatly refused to process the information. Vittorio Castiglione. The name tasted like ash in my mouth. He was a man who had spent the last year making my life absolutely miserable. Vittorio had slowly wormed his way into our lives over the past twelve months, and every single time he crossed my path, he wore a smug, punchable smirk. He treated me with a condescending attitude that made me feel utterly insignificant, always looking at me as if I were some unsightly piece of trash stuck to the bottom of his hand-crafted designer leather shoes. He was slick, incredibly wealthy, deeply manipulative, and now he was going to be my stepfather.

"Well?" my mother finally asked, her sharp voice cutting through my frozen silence.

She set her teacup down with a decisive, metallic click that grated on my raw nerves.

"Aren’t you going to say anything? Or are you just going to sit there looking sour like you always do?"

I couldn’t breathe. My chest felt dangerously tight, as if a heavy steel band were wrapping around my ribs and squeezing the air right out of my lungs. The old refrigerator in the corner hummed loudly, a stark contrast to the sudden, suffocating silence that filled the space between us. My fingers gripped the worn edge of the wooden table so hard that my knuckles turned stark white and began to ache. I opened my mouth, desperate to find the words to scream, to tell her what a massive mistake she was making, but no sound came out. My throat was completely dry.

Across from me, however, my sister Camilla had no such reservations. She let out an excited, high-pitched squeal that vibrated through the small room and made my ears ring. Camilla had always been the pretty one, the daughter my mother paraded around like a prize pony. She had the perfect golden hair, the wide blue eyes, and a personality that was as bubbly as cheap champagne.

"Oh my God, Mom! That’s amazing! Congratulations!" she gushed, throwing her arms around our mother's neck with pure, unadulterated joy.

My mother smiled warmly, reaching up to squeeze Camilla’s hand. Her hard, critical expression softened in a way it never, ever did when she looked at me. To her, Camilla was the golden child, the perfect daughter who could do no wrong. I was just the disappointment, the quiet shadow that failed to meet her high expectations.

"I should go," I mumbled, my voice sounding thick, hollow, and incredibly distant to my own ears.

I pushed back my wooden chair, the loud, harsh scraping sound echoing off the narrow kitchen walls. Neither of them tried to stop me. They didn't even look up. In fact, my mother barely spared me a passing glance as I stood up and walked out of the apartment, leaving them to their shared, sparkling joy.

The cold, biting walk back to my own small apartment did absolutely nothing to cool my temper; it only fueled the dark, hot rage simmering deep in my chest. I wrapped my thin wool coat tighter around my shoulders, shivering as the wind whipped through the narrow alleyways. The city was waking up, but everything looked bleak and gray. My cheap boots clicked sharply against the icy pavement.

Vittorio was completely fake, a master manipulator who hid his cold cruelty behind a polished, charming veneer. He loved dropping sugar-coated insults whenever my mother wasn't looking, murmuring things to me in passing when we were alone in a room. He had a way of speaking that made every word feel like a calculated strike, delivered with a sickeningly sweet smile.

"Are you sure you want to wear that, Sienna? It doesn't really do you any favors," he had said once, his eyes scanning my oversized sweater with blatant disgust.

Or another time, with that same mocking tilt of his head: "You’re so… different from your sister, aren't you? It's almost hard to believe you're related."

My mother never noticed his snide remarks, or perhaps she simply didn’t care enough to intervene. To her, Vittorio was a golden ticket to a life of luxury, a way out of the middle-class struggle she so thoroughly despised. Nothing else mattered to her.

The moment I shut the heavy door to my apartment and stepped into the quiet sanctuary of my bedroom, my phone began to buzz aggressively in my hand. I looked down at the screen. It was my mother.

I let out a heavy, exhausted sigh before pressing the answer button and placing the phone to my ear.

"Sienna," she said immediately, her voice sharp, impatient, and dripping with disappointment. Her voice was a weapon she knew how to wield with terrifying precision. "I don’t understand why you couldn’t be more supportive earlier. This is a huge milestone for our family. Can’t you at least pretend to be happy for me, just this once? Is that really too much to ask?"

I clenched my jaw so hard it ached, staring out my dark window at the distant city lights. The room was freezing, the radiator clanking uselessly in the corner. I sat on the edge of my mattress, staring at the peeling wallpaper. I wanted to scream. I wanted to tell her that her fiancé was a monster. Instead, I forced my voice to remain completely blank.

"I’ll send you a wedding gift, Mom," I said flatly, refusing to let her bait me into a shouting match that I knew I would lose.

She sighed dramatically, the sharp sound of her disapproval crackling through the cheap line. "You’ve always been so cold, Sienna. So distant. I don’t know why you can’t be more like Camilla. She actually cares about this family. She actually cares about my happiness."

"Goodnight, Mom," I muttered, hanging up the phone before she could utter another painful comparison.

The tears came then—hot, angry, stupid tears that blurred my vision and spilled over my cheeks. I hated myself for letting her words get to me. I hated that she still had the power to make me feel so utterly worthless. I quickly wiped the moisture away with the back of my hand, my gaze drifting to the small, silver-framed photo of my father sitting on my nightstand.

The silver frame was slightly tarnished, but the picture inside was pristine. My father was standing in our old backyard, holding a spatula and laughing at something off-camera. He was the only person in my life who had ever made me feel like I was enough, just as I was. He had been my anchor, my safe harbor in a world that always felt too loud and demanding. I stared at his kind eyes, knowing with absolute certainty that he would have despised Vittorio. He would have seen right through the man's expensive suits and fake smiles.

Before I could sink any deeper into my grief, my phone buzzed again. This time, it wasn't a call. It was a text message from Camilla:

"Hey, Sienna! Come dress shopping with me tomorrow? It’ll be fun! Please say yes!"

Staring down at the glowing screen, I felt a heavy, suffocating weight settle in my chest. I knew how this went. If I said no, my mother would use it as ammunition to label me as selfish, bitter, and jealous for weeks to come. She would make my life a living hell.

With an exhausted, defeated sigh, I tapped out a quick response: "Okay, sure."

I tossed the phone onto my bed and stared blankly at the ceiling. Tomorrow was going to absolutely suck.