The Godfather’s Twenty Year Dream Was Her Chapter 08

The Godfather’s Twenty Year Dream Was Her Chapter 08

I jolted upright in bed and hailed a taxi straight to the hospital.

My hands shook nonstop the whole ride. I kept repeating to myself: It’ll be fine. Nothing bad is going to happen.

In my past life, Alistair’s mom lived long enough to see us get married.

She still had years left. How could she be dying now?

But a knot of fear lingered. My rebirth might’ve rewritten the timeline. Everything was different now.

Alistair’s mother had always been kind to me.

When I was little, my dad tricked my mom into having me.

Once she realized he was broke and lazy, she left without hesitation and divorced him.

Growing up with my father meant walking on eggshells. Sober, he was fine. Drunk, he was violent.

Every single time, it was Alistair’s mom knocking on our door to rescue me.

Later, whenever she heard my dad was out drinking, she’d invite me over to stay the night.

To me, she was kinder than my birth mother. Even though Alistair and I didn’t end up together, I still wanted her to live.

Alistair sat alone outside the ICU, head in his hands, defeated on the hallway bench. Two faint marks from Rafael’s punches were still visible on his face.

“How’s your mom?”

Alistair shook his head silently.

I sat down beside him.

Dawn broke, painting the sky pale, when the operating room doors opened. We rushed over at once.

“We’ve stabilized her for now, but the follow-up treatment will be expensive. The family needs to discuss the costs.”

I glanced at the bill. It was a six-figure sum, way more than Alistair could afford right now.

I took a deep breath, opened my banking app on my phone, and sold all the stocks I hadn’t locked in yet. “I have the money. Take it. Whatever it takes, we save her first.”

Alistair gave a bitter smile. “You were right. Money really does solve everything.”

Alistair’s mom stayed in the ICU for a full week.

The doctors needed the family nearby at all times, so Alistair rented a small motel room close to the hospital.

He slept there overnight, and I brought meals during the day so he could take breaks.

Rafael called me once during this time. He asked, “You haven’t been in school these days. Are you with Alistair?”

I didn’t deny it. “Yeah.”

“The bank manager said you cashed out all your stocks. Did you give that money to Alistair?”

“Yeah.”

“I see..” The boy sighed, his voice soft. “So I guess my plan to swoop in while he was down didn’t work out, huh?”

Before I could reply, he sighed again on his own. “Don’t worry about explaining. I don’t want to be the guy making this harder for you. We should just… end it.”

Then, almost as if by magic, a top-tier medical team took over her case. Ten days later, Alistair’s mom was finally out of the woods.

She was furious once she found out Alistair and I had skipped school for so long. She insisted we go back immediately.

We hired a nurse to care for her, and life slowly went back to normal.

On the drive back to school, I scrolled through my old messages with Rafael, wondering if I should reach out to explain.

While I was thinking, Alistair spoke. “Were you serious about him?”

I jumped and quickly locked my phone.

In two lifetimes, I’d only ever loved two men. And they were night and day.

Alistair was practical, hardworking, disciplined, and self-restrained.

I knew he hated anything disrupting his plans. So I’d hidden my teenage crush and stayed by his side as a friend for twenty years, only mustering the courage to confess in college.

Even when we dated, Alistair never celebrated holidays. All the gifts he gave me were everyday necessities. Even once he got rich, he clung to his frugal habits and rarely bought anything fancy.

Rafael was the opposite—pure, unfiltered romance. Thoughtful, attentive, and never afraid to say what he felt.

We hadn’t dated long, but he always found some elaborate little anniversary to mark. Every gift was beautiful and expensive, as refined as he was.

Sometimes when we walked outside, if my eyes lingered on something, that same thing would turn up in my backpack that night as a surprise.

I’d already lived through life with the first man. It ended in divorce.

Now I was living the second. And until that text message, it had been perfect.