A Million Dollars Too Late Chapter 08

A Million Dollars Too Late Chapter 08

Marcello’s POV

I refused all treatment. The only thing that gave me even the smallest relief from the guilt was to feel the

same suffering Audrey had felt.

I used to be the most powerful man in Chicago. Now I was nothing but skin and bones.

Every time my stomach flared, I curled up on the floor of that apartment.

“Audrey.”

“It hurts.”

Nobody answered.

When the heavy snow returned to Chicago, I carried the urn back to the Lake Forest estate. I wanted to spend

one last Christmas with Audrey and our child.

The empty mansion was filled with the ghosts of her.

The way she’d been so nervous the first time she walked into my room. How she always had to adjust my tie

two or three times before she got it right.

How, after I’d carried her in from the snow, she’d looked at me, weak and broken, and said, “I wasn’t faking

anything.”

Why didn’t I believe her?

I sat by the bedroom window, the urn clutched against my chest. Days without sleep had hollowed me out,

and exhaustion finally pulled me under.

When I opened my eyes, I was standing in the snow outside the estate.

My body felt weightless. I looked down and saw no shadow on the snow beneath me.

For a second, I thought I was finally dead.

Then I spotted a familiar figure under the bare trees in the distance.

Audrey was wearing a long white dress. She wasn’t pale anymore. She had no bruises, no scars.

She was holding the hand of a small boy.

The boy looked up at me. His eyes, his face-they were almost identical to mine.

And I knew in that instant. This was the child I’d never met.

“Audrey.”

I ran toward them like a madman.