Chapter 2: The Son Who Chose Another Mother

Through a blur of tears, Leo’s face came into sharp focus.

Three years had passed. He was taller. He looked different.

But none of that mattered. Leo was alive.

I rushed forward, shoving people aside, and wrapped him in a tight hug.

“Leo, come with Mommy, okay?”

The next second, he bit down hard on my arm, then kicked me viciously in the stomach.

The pain made me let go, and he scrambled behind Francesca.

He peeked out from behind her legs and stuck his tongue out at me.

“You’re not my mom anymore. Aunt Francesca is my mom now.”

“I don’t want to go with you. All you do is make me do homework.”

“She plays Nintendo Switch with me, and she buys me my favorite M&Ms.”

“You don’t love me at all. I don’t want a mom like you.”

I stared at Leo, my heart feeling like it had been gouged from my chest.

Leo had had weak teeth since he was little. The dentist had warned us to keep him away from sugar.

Anyone who truly cared about him wouldn’t trade his health for a moment of quiet.

Francesca shielded Leo behind her and smiled sweetly at me.

“You might not know this, but three years ago, Leo was the one who cried and begged to come with us.”

“I wanted to leave him with you, honestly. But he kept saying he didn’t want to live with a bad woman like you. He begged me to take him.”

I opened my mouth to speak.

But Leo’s eyes were filled with such disgust that the words caught in my throat.

Dimitri had betrayed me.

Francesca had betrayed me.

My family and friends had all betrayed me.

And now, the son I’d nearly died to bring into this world didn’t want me.

A flicker of pity crossed Dimitri’s eyes.

He walked over, holding his and Francesca’s daughter, and lowered his voice.

“Lorelei, no matter what, I’m the one who wronged you.”

“How about this? As long as you stop making trouble for Francesca, I’ll let Leo and Mia both recognize you as their godmother. We can still be one big family.”

My parents exchanged a look, clearly satisfied with this arrangement.

They looked at me, their tone offering me a way out.

“Lorelei Lombardi, your sister and Dimitri have been more than generous.”

“Go apologize to your sister, and let’s not bring this up again. We can all go on living as a family.”

Dimitri and I had been together for ten years, married for six.

Now he was my sister’s husband.

The son I had nearly died delivering was now someone else’s child.

The people who stole everything from me had done nothing wrong. I was the one who was supposed to apologize.

Finally, I raised my hand and slapped Francesca across the face.

“You’re the one who slept with my husband. Why should I be the one to apologize?”

Before I could finish, my mother’s hand cracked across my face.

“How dare you keep talking nonsense?”

“If it weren’t for you, Francesca and Dimitri would have been together years ago!”

My vision swam, and the coppery tang of blood filled my nose.

Dimitri rushed forward, pushing me toward the door.

“Lorelei, have you forgotten? Mom and Dad have bad hearts. Stop making a scene.”

I looked up at his face, so familiar yet so strange, and my voice trembled.

“Dimitri, what did I ever do to deserve this?”

We’d been together since the summer after high school graduation.

We filled out our applications to John Jay College of Criminal Justice together.

But Francesca’s scores weren’t good enough. My mother, always biased, locked me in my room and changed my application on the last day, trying to force me to go to community college with Francesca.

It was Dimitri who climbed through my window and helped me escape.

That day, he stood between me and my parents and said:

“You’ve gone too far. Lorelei has the right to choose her own life.”

Later, we went to the same college.

I always wanted to be a cop. He was right there beside me, never once holding me back.

In the third year of our marriage, I got pregnant.

To make sure I would have a safe delivery, Dimitri, who never believed in anything, knelt for hours outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral, praying for a blessed cross for me.

Back then, I’d cried and called him a fool.

He just held me and said:

“Lorelei, the only thing I fear in this life is losing you.”

But in the end, he was the one who let go.

In my darkest hour, he became someone else’s husband. My child started calling someone else Mom.

My career was another casualty of their “deaths.” I was demoted from Major Crimes to the evidence warehouse, spending my days surrounded by cold case files and dusty boxes.

For the past three years, I had nightmares almost every night—of Dimitri and Leo burning to ash, of Francesca falling into the hands of a killer and being tortured to death.

That’s why I chased every lead, no matter how dangerous.

But in the end, it was all a lie, designed by them from the very beginning.