Chapter Fourteen: Deception

"Mrs. Smith, why don't you take a look around the Mansion before we set down for the lunch?" Daniel suggested in his usual warm and polite tone.

How could anyone deny such a sweet person, right?

Well, that was exactly how I found myself following Domenic, Mark, Simon, and Mrs. Smith as we all started taking a tour through the huge Alessandro Mansion.

The fact that I was surrounded by my least favorite brothers and a weird woman, didn't help to brighten my mood even a single bit.

Daniel, Crist, and Leo stayed behind to set the table for the lunch that we were going to attend with Mrs. Smith.

We passed through the library, a parlor, storage, guest rooms, long hallways, gym, activity room, Domenic's office, and finally entered the hall where our bedrooms were located.

Of course, no one bothered to look at any of my brothers' rooms but we all stopped exactly in front of mine.

What was there to look in my room? As far as I could see it was just a room, a big one which looked thousands of times more expensive than my poor soul.

"And this is Emilia's room," Domenic told Mrs. Smith, and the woman suddenly looked too excited.

It was like she was going to find some kind of treasure in my room.

I just stayed completely silent as I looked at Domenic. What I liked about him was that in front of Mrs. Smith he didn't try to be fake.

He didn't suddenly start calling me by nicknames like Mark. I was still Emilia to him. He was still his indifferent self who didn't bother to pay me any attention except the one and only moment when he introduced Mrs. Smith to me.

In short, he was acting exactly the same towards me as the last two days.

However, on the other hand, Mark's arm was once again around my shoulder. I wanted to shrug it off and stay far away from him but at the same time, I didn't want to cause any scene in front of Mrs. Smith.

As I struggled with the jumble of thoughts that were running through my mind, we finally entered into my room.

It took me a few seconds to register that my entire room was looking completely different from how it looked in the morning when I left.

"Oh my! I have never seen such a beautiful room before in my life." Mrs. Smith exclaimed in surprise as she looked at the room in amazement.

I was no different from her, however, I was amazed at the beauty of the room but the lies that were filled in it.

And if the new decoration of the room was not a hard blow to both my mind and heart, then the words...no, the lies that Domenic started telling Mrs. Smith crushed me to my core.

"Daniel took her for shopping yesterday and we brought everything that she needed....."

Yep! The closet was really filled with clothes, shoes, bags, simple cosmetics, and a little bit of jewelry.

"....we barely have spent time with her but these are some of the happy memories of the first day...."

There were photo frames lined on my bedside table and also on the desk.

There was one when I was a baby, cuddled in the arms of a man whom I had never seen before in my life.

There was another one where I was with my mom and we both were smiling as I held a huge lollipop in my hand.

I had never seen that photo before in my life. In the photo, I was around seven or eight. From where did my brothers got that photo?

Another frame held a photo with me and all my brothers. The only photo that I recognized since it was taken on the very first day when I came to the Alessandro Mansion.

It was the moment when we all were sitting in the dining hall and somehow the photo gave the feeling of warmth and coziness, even though at that time I was feeling anything but happy.

Another photo with me riding a bicycle as I was looking down at something near my foot. I looked cute in the photo to others since I heard Mrs. Smith cooing as she looked at it.

However, only I remembered the dark truth behind that photo.

Each and every frame showed me living a happy and cheerful life, but all of them were lies. Pure lies that made me dig my small nails into my palms.

My mind had already started piecing the puzzles, however, Mrs. Smith's next words summed everything up pretty well.

"Aww, look at that sweet Emilia. Your brothers love you a lot dear. There's no doubt that they will always keep you happy. It has barely been two days and they have already make sure that you won't experience any kind of discomfort." Mrs. Smith said in her chirpy time as she looked at my brothers with satisfaction.

"They gave you such a beautiful room, brought you so many things, probably more than what you needed. They are already taking you out to make you familiar with the city and they have chosen the best school in the city for you." Mrs. Smith continued praising my brothers.

I wanted the woman to shut up immediately. How could she not see the lies that were so obvious?

They changed the decoration of my entire room just because she was going to visit.

I thought that Daniel brought me shopping along with him because he cared, but no! It was also because they knew about Mrs. Smith's visit.

The photos? They were nothing but lies. Where did they even found photos of my childhood? They took a photo of me on my very first day in the Mansion and I was not even aware of it.

I thought Domenic asked Mark to take me out because he actually wanted me to become familiar with the city. Oh my! How wrong I was?

From the moment I set my foot inside the Alessandro mansion, my brothers covered my life with lies and deception, exactly like my room.