Chapter 74: A Different Kind of Pain
Eleonore’s POV
The funeral was already being arranged when I arrived at the Shein mansion. It was impossible not to notice the grief that seemed to permeate the air. When I walked through the front doors with Rhett, the head maid, Annie, walked up to me immediately and enveloped me in a hug.
Annie was a large part of Bastian and my life when we were younger. Whenever Ronan had to go overseas for a job or stayed in his office for long hours, Annie always took care of us. She was as much our parent as Ronan was.
I felt her squeezing hug as she tightened her arms around me, and I gave just as much as she did. It was a different kind of grief between sharing it with someone who did not know the person who died and a person who was as much part of the deceased life as their very own limbs.
That’s what Bastian was. That’s what the entire small family was. It was broken and cracked in all the wrong places, but it was there. When you grow up the way we did, that was all that mattered.