Chapter 20
48%
መ D X
A second memory crashed in. One I’d buried deep.
The day she came home from the cremation. She was holding the urn like it was the last piece of her heart. Her hands were trembling. My parents said she cursed them. That she was unstable. That she’d threatened them.
So I slapped her.
Slapped her so hard she dropped the urn.
The ashes scattered across the marble floor like dust.
And fuck she knelt down and started scraping them back together with her bare hands, sobbing like an animal that had just lost its only child.
I didn’t help her.
I didn’t even stay.
I turned and left the room because I couldn’t stand the sight of her pain.
Now I know why… Because I caused it.
Every moment of it.
I let my son die. And I left the mother of my child to suffer alone while I smiled for the
camera and danced in someone else’s arms.
I grabbed the whiskey bottle and hurled it against the wall. It shattered, but I needed more. The glasses went next. The chairs. The table.
Everything had to break.
Everything had to bleed like I was bleeding inside.
Mico didn’t speak. He stood there quietly, a split lip and pity in his eyes. But I didn’t want his pity.
I wanted time to rewind. I wanted a second chance. But the one thing money can’t buy… is
mercy.
And Therese?
She had none left for me.
**
I used a burner number. She blocked every damn line connected to me, and I couldn’t blame her. After what I did… what I didn’t do.
The phone rang twice. Then three times. Then…
“Hello?” Her voice came through, soft but confused. She didn’t recognize the number. Not. yet.
I couldn’t speak right away. My throat was raw. Like every word might cut me on the way
Chapter 19
3/3 57.6%
22:11 Sun, Aug 10
48%
X
out. “Therese…” I breathed her name like it could bring her back. “Wait. Don’t hang up. Please. Just listen for a second. I didn’t know, okay? I didn’t know Cleo was gone. If I knew, if I had known-”
“You would’ve what?” she snapped, ice–cold now. “Left your mistress’s bed for five fucking minutes?”
I flinched. She recognized my voice too fast. I shouldn’t have expected softness. Not after everything. I tried to say her name again. To say something but she hung up.
Just like that.
Like I was nothing. Like I deserved nothing.
I didn’t even think. I hit redial. I needed her to hear me. To know I wasn’t some heartless
bastard who…
Click. The call connected, but this time it wasn’t her.
A man’s voice. Calm. Unshaken. “Stop calling my wife, Mr. Massaro.”
My eyes narrowed. “Wife? Is that what she calls herself now?” I laughed, but there was no humor in it. “That’s cute. Playing house with a man who’ll never know her the way I do.”
He didn’t rise to the bait. No emotion in his voice. Just steel and finality. “You had your chance. And you buried your own son while laughing with another woman. She’s not your problem anymore. She’s mine now. Call her again, and the only thing you’ll be dialing next is your lawyer.”
He hung up before I could speak.
The silence after that call?
FUCK!
It was louder than anything.
I grabbed the phone and hurled it across the suite. It cracked against the mirror and shattered into pieces. Just like everything else in my life.
I wasn’t done. I flipped the glass table with my bare hands and sent it crashing into the bar counter. Bottles smashed. Liquor spilled everywhere. The rage was boiling out of me, and I
didn’t want to stop it.
Chairs went flying. The framed photo of my father on the shelf? Gone. I shattered that too. I smashed the lights. Punched the goddamn wall until my knuckles split and the drywall
gave way.
Outside the door, I could hear them. Mico. The boys. Whispering like I couldn’t hear them.
“If only he chose his wife instead of the mistress…”
“He didn’t even know the kid was dying. He was too busy celebrating Ruby’s son’s birthday…”
“Well boss didn’t know she was a Duke’s daughter all along. He thought she was just an
Chapter 20
2/3 59.6%
22:12 Sun, Aug 10
48%
อ
X
orphan.”
“He humiliated the wrong woman.”
“Therese will never forgive him.”
I kicked the fucking door.
They went quiet. Like rats. Like cowards.
I dropped onto the floor, surrounded by the mess I made. Blood on my knuckles. Scotch soaking my shirt. And silence in my ears where my son’s laugh used to be.
I fucking hated myself. Hated myself for thinking Therese was just playing the victim again. Hated myself for letting Ruby poison my mind and tell me Cleo was doing better. That he was improving. That Therese was exaggerating things like always.
But she wasn’t. She wasn’t. She was telling me the truth.
And I left her to face death alone.
I chose the wrong woman. And now I’ve lost the only two people who ever really loved me.
And FUCK help me…
I deserved it.
I never meant for any of this to happen. Not like this. I used to think I had control over everything: money, people, emotions. But sitting here now, in the wreckage of my own damn life, all I can do is drown in it. Grief, guilt, and memories that won’t shut up…
Flashbacks.
The night I met Therese, it was supposed to be just another bar night. I was at Brass Lantern, alone, same as usual, scotch in hand and bitterness on my tongue. Ruby had left a few months before that, walked out like a storm, and I let her. I told myself I didn’t care. But deep down, I was empty.
Then I saw her.
