I completely lost it and rushed forward but before I could reach it, his guards grabbed me roughly from behind.
“Let me go!” I screamed, fighting so hard my wrists burned in their hands. “You can’t do this! Those are Kyle and Cora!”
Xander’s face darkened slightly from my screaming. He lifted a hand impatiently. “Hold her still.”
The guards tightened their grip immediately.
I looked at him in disbelief. Was this really the same man who once cried while holding our children in the hospital nursery?
“Xander! If she burns their ashes, I swear to God, I’ll hate you for the rest of my life.”
For one second, something shifted in his eyes but quickly disappeared. “Lory, stop fucking making this harder than it needs to be.” Then he turned away from me completely like I wasn’t even worth looking at anymore. He walked back to Claudia’s side and gently fixed the sleeve of her coat because she said she felt cold.
Meanwhile I was on the ground breaking apart.
Claudia smiled excitedly and carefully poured Kyle and Cora’s ashes into the custom fireworks tubes. “Xander, look! I think it’s gonna work.”
He kissed the top of her head. “Good girl.”
Then the fireworks exploded.
The night sky lit up in bright colors, gold, blue, red, purple. The entire Moretti estate glowed under the lights while everyone stared upward in shock.
Claudia clapped happily like a little kid. She quickly pulled out her phone and went live on TikTok, holding it up toward the sky. “Oh my God! Watch this fireworks! Is it colorful?! It’s Cora and Kyle Moretti’s ashes inside… so beautiful.”
She turned the camera towards me, grinning maniacally. “I know those kids are happy now watching their ashes turn into colorful lights in the sky. Am I right, Lorraine?”
The lens focused directly on me, capturing my face streaked with tears as I sobbed uncontrollably on the grass.
“Beautiful?”
I collapsed onto the ground completely. My chest hurt so badly I thought I was dying, and all I could do was stare at the fireworks exploding above me while tears blurred my vision.
“Kyle...” I sobbed brokenly. “Cora...”
My babies.
Those were my babies... Now they were nothing but colors in the sky for someone else’s entertainment.
I covered my mouth and cried so hard I couldn’t breathe. How did we end up here? How did Xander become this person?
We grew up together. Everybody in the city knew Xander Moretti was obsessed with me long before he became the mafia boss of the Golden Lion Empire and CEO of Moretti Global Properties.
When we were kids, he followed me everywhere like a shadow.
“Lory, wait for me.”
“Lory, look what I got you.”
“Lory, don’t cry.”
Back then, if I even frowned, he’d panic.
I was scared of thunderstorms as a teenager, so he sat outside my bedroom door the entire night with a gun in his lap just to make me feel safe. I once mentioned liking white roses, and a week later every garden in our estate was filled with them. When I got sick during winter, he shut down an entire business meeting in Hong Kong just to fly home because I told him I missed him.
That was Xander; cold to the world and gentle only to me.
Everyone feared him. Mafia bosses, politicians, CEOs. Nobody dared cross him. But he’d kneel in front of me to tie my heels if I got tired.
When he proposed to me, he got down on one knee in front of the entire Moretti family and said, “I don’t give a damn who disagrees. Lorraine’s the only woman I’ll ever have.”
And for years... he really did love me.
Or maybe I was stupid enough to believe he did.
Then Claudia appeared three months ago.
A twenty two year old secretary he hired after she accidentally slapped him during one of his drunken nights. He told me later he thought she was me at first, but when he tried touching her, she shoved him away and slapped him across the face.
Nobody had ever done that to Xander before.
Instead of getting angry, he became obsessed.
He searched the entire city to find her again.
Turns out she was a girl I once helped. Some poor college dropout being harassed outside one of Moretti Global’s buildings.
I saved her because I felt bad for her.
God, what a joke.
Xander moved her into headquarters after that, then beside his office, then beside his bed.
“I’m not interested in rich men,” she used to tell him proudly and Xander loved hearing that shit.
She acted like she was different from every woman around him and he got addicted to chasing her.
“She’s interesting, Lory,” he told me once while adjusting his cufflinks casually. “Nobody says no to me. I wanna see how long she lasts.”
I remember staring at him in disbelief. “You’re humiliating me.”
He walked over and held my face gently back then. “The woman I love is still you.”
Those words ruined me because I believed them.
“She’s temporary,” he whispered. “Once I’m bored, I’ll come back to you fully. Just tolerate her for now, baby.”
So I endured everything. Claudia wearing my clothes. Sitting in his lap at public events. Mocking me inside my own house. Sleeping in his mansion while I cried alone in our bedroom.
And now? Now she burned my children’s ashes while he stood beside her smiling.
The fireworks slowly disappeared from the sky and darkness returned to the estate. My ears rang loudly and my body suddenly felt numb.
I looked at Xander one last time. He was still standing beside Claudia while she laughed happily in his arms.
And I realized something terrifying. The man I loved was gone. My vision suddenly turned black and everything disappeared.
….
I had a long dream.
In the dream, Xander was still mine. Not this cold monster standing beside another woman while my world burned around me.
No.
He was still the boy who used to sneak into my room during thunderstorms because I couldn’t sleep alone. Still the reckless teenager who drove across the entire city at two in the morning because I casually said I wanted strawberry pastries. Still the man who held my hands after Kyle and Cora were born and cried harder than I did. Still the man who promised me forever.
“Lory,” he whispered in that dream while kissing my forehead softly, “I’ll never let anyone hurt you. Never.”
Then why did you become the person who destroyed me the most?
“Mrs. Moretti! You’re awake!”
My eyes slowly opened.
