Chapter 4He Hated Me Until He Learned I Was Dead

The young boy still didn’t understand what ashes meant. Aunt Florenece had only explained that this was the single item I had left behind.

Leander suddenly laughed in anger.

“A keepsake? She is still breathing, and you already call her belongings keepsakes? Does Corinne even realize she deserves death?”

“If the example is wrong, everything below it goes wrong. No wonder you became nothing.”

Hazel’s eyes shifted around. She covered her cheek and cried even louder.

“Dad, will my face be ruined? It hurts so badly…”

The moment Leander heard this, he hurried downstairs.

When he returned, a necklace was already in his palm.

“So this is what all this mess is about?”

“Then I’ll say it plainly, my home allows nothing linked to Corinne to stay here!”

Cassian yelled, “No!”

However, it was too late.

He slammed the necklace hard into the wall. The charm broke at once, and the powder inside spread all over.

“That was my mom… she is already gone. Why, why do you still have to take away the final thing she left for me!”

“I don’t want a father anymore. I hate Dad!”

Leander froze on the spotl, his face turning white.

At that time, Georgina walked inside and happened to hear the last words.

“Cassian, how can you say that about your own mom?”

“She didn’t take good care of you, we won’t hold that against her, but you can’t make things up and say she’s gone. Aren’t you doing that on purpose to upset Dad?”

Just a moment earlier, Leander had been full of sadness. Now, feeling fooled, his anger burst out.

Like a madman, he smashed everything in the room.

“Why doesn’t someone like Corinne just die already!”

“She could even think up a joke like this and teach the child to lie to me. How did I ever lose my mind and fall for her back then!”

“Eight years ago, she fooled me once; that wasn’t enough, and now she wants to fool me again. She’s beyond help!”

The air suddenly felt heavy.

Beyond the window, thick snow dropped in spinning waves.

Inside the space, the silence was so deep it felt like even breathing made noise.

I shut my eyes in hopeless pain.

Eight years had gone by, yet Leander still hated me.

When I first became pregnant with Cassian, we hadn’t even completed our honeymoon.

Like every couple deeply in love, we wanted to walk side by side and see every place on the map together.

At that time, Leander cared for me with his whole heart. If I pointed east, he would never turn west.

If I mentioned Milan, he would cancel the Paris flight immediately.

One month after the wedding, the first words he spoke each morning after waking were gentle love words meant only for me.

I would laugh and tease him, asking how long he planned to keep saying things like that.

And he would always softly kiss me, saying he would keep saying them for his whole life.

At the moment when our love felt strongest, we found out I was pregnant using a test strip.

I didn’t want to give up the honeymoon journey.

He told me that after the baby arrived, he would bring the child along with us everywhere.

At that time, nobody thought that this would be the last gentle time we would ever share.

Just like that, we went back to the country and visited the biggest hospital in the city for a pregnancy check.

While signing in, we unexpectedly met Georgina.

Only then did I realize that the college girl I had supported for three years had already become a nurse.

I smiled and asked how she was doing, asking if she had run into any problems at work.

Maybe happiness had clouded my mind; I didn’t notice the quiet admiration in the way she looked at Leander.

I went inside for the checkup, while she and Leander waited outside.

Using the reason that she worked as a nurse and wanted to return my kindness, she added Leander’s contact number.

She told him he could reach out anytime if he had questions.

At the start, their conversation was only about him learning pregnancy and health information.

But as time went on, the tone of their messages slowly shifted.

They began to talk often about everyday things.

Whenever Georgina stayed late at work or met difficult patients, she would vent to him about it.