The Don’s Fallen Queen Chapter 09

The Don’s Fallen Queen Chapter 09

At last, an elderly nurse spoke up with trembling lips.

“That day… a woman came. She said she was the deceased woman’s sister.”

“She took the body away.”

Dante’s expression changed instantly.

Sierra didn’t have a sister.

She never had.

…

On the southern coast, the rainstorm had finally passed.

Warm yellow light spilled from the windows of an old bookstore.

Behind the counter, a woman sat quietly organizing the day’s receipts. Her long dark hair was loosely pinned up, her pale profile calm beneath the soft light.

Then the front door burst open.

“Mom!”

A little girl came running inside.

The woman looked up.

At that exact moment, the wind outside lifted the loose strands of hair beside her face.

It was Sierra.

She smiled faintly.

“Slow down.”

The little girl threw herself into her arms.

“There’s been a man outside watching you all day,” she said seriously.

Sierra froze.

Slowly, she lifted her eyes toward the street outside.

A black car sat parked across from the bookstore.

The windows were tinted dark enough to hide everything inside, but color still drained from her face little by little.

Because she knew that car too well.

Years ago, every time she came home late at night, Dante used to wait for her inside that exact car.

She stayed silent for a long moment before finally speaking softly.

“From now on, don’t walk home from school alone.”

The little girl tilted her head in confusion.

“Why?”

Sierra didn’t answer.

Her hand instinctively drifted to her lower abdomen instead.

A faint scar rested there.

The night she fell into the river, she had already been two months pregnant.

—

At one in the morning, after the bookstore closed, Sierra sat alone beneath the dim lights upstairs.

Then suddenly, the sound of the front door opening drifted up from downstairs.

Footsteps followed slowly behind it, drawing closer one step at a time.

Sierra didn’t move.

Not until the familiar figure stopped at the top of the stairs.

The entire room fell silent.

Three years was enough to make someone look like a stranger.

Dante had lost a frightening amount of weight. His black coat hung loosely from his shoulders, his eyes hollow and sunken, an old wound still half-healed along his jawline.

The two of them stared at each other across the warm yellow light.

Dante spoke first.

“You’re alive.”

Sierra looked at him calmly.

“You sound disappointed.”

Something in Dante’s eyes shattered instantly, like someone had stabbed him straight through the chest.

“Don’t talk to me like that, Sierra.” His voice turned rough. “Please.”

She froze slightly.

Because it was the first time she had ever heard Dante speak that way.

The man who once stood above everyone else now looked like someone abandoned by the entire world.

Then suddenly, a sleepy little voice drifted up from downstairs.

“Mommy…”

Dante went completely rigid.

A second later, a little girl in a nightgown wandered out rubbing her eyes.

She had the same black hair as Sierra.

The air turned deathly still.

Still half asleep, the girl wrapped her arms around Sierra’s leg.

“Mommy,” she mumbled softly, “who is he?”

Dante stood there motionless, like he had forgotten how to breathe.

Slowly, his gaze lowered toward the child.

Then his hand began to shake violently.

“She…”