Lahat ng Kabanata ng When love turns to ashes : Kabanata 91 - Kabanata 100

Xander had arrived quietly, not wanting anyone to know he was in the same city as June and Valerie. The flight had drained him, but his heart raced the moment he landed. He couldn’t sleep properly that night at the hotel; he tossed and turned, staring at the ceiling with memories of June’s tear-stained face and Valerie’s laughter echoing in his mind. He couldn’t shake the gnawing emptiness inside him so close to his child, yet still a stranger to her.The following morning, he wheeled himself to the school Valerie attended. From the other side of the street, he watched as parents dropped off their kids. His eyes locked on a little girl with two neatly packed pigtails bouncing as she ran in, her schoolbag hanging loosely on her shoulders. She was cheerful, surrounded by her friends, and her smile lit up the air like sunshine. Xander’s throat tightened as tears blurred his sight. That’s my Valerie… look at how grown she is. My little girl. I’ve missed so much of her life.For minutes, h

Xander sat quietly in his wheelchair, his hands gripping the armrests a little too tightly as he watched June and Valerie walking away. June’s hand was firmly wrapped around Valerie’s, her face a mixture of relief and suspicion. She didn’t turn back, but her body language spoke volumes protective, guarded, terrified of losing what she held most dear.Beside Xander, his loyal assistant, Mateo, shifted uneasily, his eyes darting between his boss and the retreating figures of mother and daughter. He had seen many sides of Xander the powerful businessman, the stubborn fighter, the quiet sufferer but never this fragile, almost broken version. After a long silence, Mateo finally leaned closer.“Sir… should we go after them?” Mateo’s voice was low, cautious, almost as though he feared the wrong word could shatter Xander completely.Xander raised a trembling hand and waved it slowly. His eyes glistened with unshed tears as he shook his head. “No… not now. Not like this.” His voice cracked, th

Xander returned to the school the following morning with his heart hammering so loudly he feared someone would hear it and know every raw piece of him. The sky was a thin sheet of pale blue and the air had that crispness that made people walk a little faster, clutching coats closed. He parked his wheelchair where he could see the playground, waiting until the stream of small bodies and anxious parents had thinned. He had rehearsed this moment a hundred times what he would say, how he would say it yet each rehearsal dried his mouth and loosened his hands.When Valerie appeared, it was like a small electric shock. She was laughing with a group of girls by the hopscotch squares, hair in two orderly pigtails, cheeks flushed with the bright health that every father imagines his child will have. For a second he simply watched the bend of her ear when she laughed, the impatient tap of her sneaker on the concrete and the ache inside him burned into something fiercer than longing: resolve.He

The knock was soft at first, a cautious rap that might have belonged to a neighbour with a package. June was alone in the flat Valerie had left that morning for school and the sudden sound made the hair at the back of her neck prickle. She moved to the door with the same careful wariness she’d learned to live with: hand on the deadbolt, a foot braced, a breath held.When she cracked the door a finger’s width, the man in the threshold filled the frame, smaller somehow than the memory in her head. Xander sat in a wheelchair, a grey sweater pulled tight against the morning chill, his hair thinner, his face drawn. The fire and swagger of the man she’d once loved were gone; what remained were shadows in his eyes and a pleading that made his features look younger and older at once.For a moment there was only the weight of all that history sitting between them promises made, promises broken, the public shaming, the years of shame and silence after. June’s hand tightened on the door. The pas

Mateo did not hesitate. The second Valerie bolted from the house his fingers were already on his phone, tracing the route the child had taken on the security camera feed the neighbor had let him pull up. Xander’s voice, raw and small, had been the last thing she heard; now it was Mateo’s steady commands and the careful, quick work of men who knew how to move through a city without drawing attention.Within twenty minutes a car eased up outside June’s building. Mateo hopped out, grabbed a young courier who had seen a little girl in a bright backpack crying by the fruit stall, and within two more heartbeats they were back at the door, Valerie’s small hand in the courier’s and eyes wide and embarrassed and defiant. The yard smelled of late sun and dust and something metallic—fear hanging in the air.Xander had not left. He’d stayed on the stoop the whole time, the wheelchair parked where June had left it, as if anchoring himself to the place where he had been spoken to and rejected. When