All Chapters of The Man I Swore to Hate: Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

Time did not heal everything. But it softened the edges.It dulled the pain, like the hush of waves smoothing broken glass. And in that quiet, in that slow unfolding of grief, I began to rediscover what it meant to be a mother.Not the version I was before—the one obsessed with perfection, terrified of failure. Not the woman who was always running, always fighting, always looking over her shoulder for ghosts.This time, I learned to be present. Because Achileas was growing up. And I didn’t want to miss a thing.“Ma, look!” he giggled, running barefoot across the garden with a grasshopper cupped between his palms. “It’s jumping, like me!”His little legs were scratched and muddy. His cheeks sun-kissed. His joy was so loud, so fierce, that it cracked something open in my chest.I knelt beside him, tucking a loose curl behind his ear. “You caught that all by yourself?”He nodded proudly. “I wanna keep him.”I laughed. “You’ll have to ask your Papa if bugs are allowed in the house.”Achil

I watched the bus pull away with a quiet ache in my chest. Achileas sat by the window, eyes already lost in the gray sprawl of the city ahead. He didn’t wave. He never did. But I knew he looked back.I stood there on the curb, arms crossed, the wind rustling my dress. Romero was beside me, hands in his pockets. We didn’t speak. We just stood together, watching our son vanish into a new life.“He’ll be fine,” Romero said, eventually.“I know,” I replied, though my voice sounded thinner than usual. “It’s Rosetta I’m worried about now.”He didn’t say anything to that. Because he knew.Everything changed the moment Achileas left. The house grew too quiet—and somehow, at the same time, too loud. Rosetta filled the silence with her voice, her presence, her drama.She used to cling to her brother’s every word. Now she slammed her bedroom door when I told her to clean up after herself. She used to curl beside me on the couch to watch old movies. Now she scrolled through her phone with a scoff

The house had been too quiet lately.Rosetta and Achileas’s absence was louder than the silence I used to carry. I found myself setting out four plates at dinner, only to remove two with a tight smile when Romero gave me a knowing glance. They've been gone only a few moths. Studying abroad. Living on their own. Thriving, maybe. Or pretending to. Like I used to.Romero found me out by the edge of the property again, standing where the grass thinned and the earth dropped into the flow of the river. My old spot. Where I once shouted into the wind, and where, just days before Rosetta left, I had my final real conversation with her.“You’ll catch a cold,” Romero said gently, placing a shawl over my shoulders.I didn’t answer. I was staring across the river like it could bring her back. He didn’t push me. He stood beside me like he always did, patient, warm. Unshakable.“She still hasn't told you why she chose to study abroad?” I muttered. “She says it was her friend from class, but I don't

The sea did not give him back. By morning, I was still sitting by the shore, lips chapped from the wind, eyes raw from staring into the distance, searching for a boat that never returned. The sun had already risen twice since he left, and with it, my hope had slowly, cruelly bled into the tide.Romero was gone.No letters. No note tucked into the corner of our bed. No warning. Only that last look he gave me, that flicker of defiance mixed with sorrow, and then the sound of the engine drifting further and further into the dark.When the fishing boats began returning empty, I knew. I knew before they said anything. Before Eljo came again, soaking wet and stammering, "Carmen, we looked—God, we looked everywhere—but there's no sign of him or the boat." I was already shaking by then, teeth clenched to keep the scream from tearing out of my throat.I told myself he had docked somewhere else. That maybe he made it to another cove. That he had caught something so big he stayed longer to pull

Before everything. Before her touch ever claimed me. Before her name ever burned its mark into my ribs.It started with a glance. That’s all it ever takes, isn’t it? I first saw her behind her father’s shoulder. She dressed like she was born to be stared at. All gold and silk and danger, surrounded by men with last names older than the buildings they owned. It was a winter benefit—one of those grand, exhausting things where men in velvet coats paraded their wealth and whispered politics over aged scotch. I was standing beside my father, doing what I always did in those kinds of rooms: watching, calculating, remembering names I’d be expected to know by next week.She didn’t see me. Not that night. Not really. I was another Hidalgo in a black suit, carrying the weight of a name too heavy for most men’s shoulders.But I saw her.Carmenta Paradis. The girl the whispers warned you about. The one they said would devour you whole if you let her. I wasn’t afraid, though. I was fascinated. Not