All Chapters of Reunion with the Don After Parting: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Five years after we split, at the worst point of my whole life, I ran into Adrian again.He was the youngest, most untouchable Don on the East Coast.It was a social gathering for the East Coast mafia families, and nobody had expected the Vance family's new Don to show up with his fiancée on his arm.People were whispering. "Adrian came himself? When he shows his face in person, it usually means someone's about to bleed. He doesn't spare anyone.""They say he can't stand these fake little parties.""So he came for her?""I heard that Ashford girl, Eve, is working here as a waitress. Maybe he came to watch her squirm."I was in a corner handing out drinks when my back went rigid. I looked up, straight into Adrian's gray-brown eyes.That look brought a single word to mind: cold.Everyone in the East Coast underworld knew how much Adrian had loved me once.I was the last survivor of the Ashford family, a family that had its moment of glory.Five years ago my family was slaughtered down to

Adrian turned away, cold, and didn't spare me another glance.The woman was still hounding me for money. I lowered myself and begged her, said I really had none, that I'd find a way to get her dress cleaned.She told the manager to throw me out right then.Head down, I forced the words through my teeth. "I really need tonight's five hundred dollars. I can't leave."Adrian's footsteps stopped.He pulled a checkbook from his pocket, wrote a check for ten thousand, and tossed it at my feet like alms to a beggar."Take it and get out of my sight." He looked at me. "Don't ever let me see you again —— a woman who only cares about money."I knelt on the cold marble, picked up the check, and said quietly, "Thank you, Don."I meant it. With that ten thousand, I could clean the woman's dress.The rest was enough for two rounds of Damian's dialysis.After that night, everyone said Adrian truly hated me now. That he'd never love me again.I knew he didn't want to see me either. I took the check an

Adrian stared at me, those gray-brown eyes cold enough to frighten, like he wanted to swallow me whole.What I'd said must have dragged him back to before. How he'd betrayed his family, given up everything for me, and how I'd thrown him away for the measly million his father handed me.He would never understand how he could have lost to that million.My stomach was churning, agony rolling through it. I didn't want to say anything more. I turned to go, and then the ground dropped away under my feet, and the next second Adrian had thrown me over his broad shoulder.Like some thug who wouldn't hear a word of reason, face cold, he carried me straight out of the underground bar.Everyone stared, shocked. I fought and struggled, telling him to put me down.He clamped my hands tight and pressed down on the cut on my wrist, snarling at me. "Eve, you must be a demon God sent to torment me.""You're a demon. You stole my soul."He threw me into that black Cullinan, leaned over to pin my legs, gr

My back hit the wall, and I grunted at the pain.Damian must have heard. He ran out of the ward on bare little feet.He spread his arms and planted himself in front of me, glaring up at Adrian, refusing to let him touch me again.Adrian looked down at him, a cold smile tugging at his mouth, and said flatly, "You're just like your mother. Insufferable."I watched Damian's eyes slowly redden. That one line must have cut him to the core.Under his pillow he'd been secretly keeping a newspaper clipping of Adrian. He'd always known Adrian was his father.Through all those painful nights after he got sick, he'd fall asleep in my arms and dream his daddy had come home.He said the daddy in his dreams missed Damian so much.Just like Damian missed his daddy, always crying about it in secret.He said his daddy wasn't going to leave anymore, and wouldn't let Mommy work so hard at the underground bar ever again.Except then the dream would end, and Damian met his father for real.Only to hear him

That day, the doctors brought Damian back.He slipped into a deep coma, and no one could say when he'd wake.I sat there staring at him lying so still in the ICU bed, like he was only sleeping.Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Charlotte quietly smiling.She faked a sigh and scolded me, frowning. "Eve, if you'd told Adrian, told me the truth sooner, I'm not a petty person. I could have let the child through the Vance family's door, let him call me mother.""He never had to suffer this much. It's all because of your fake pride, and now you've nearly gotten him killed..."She must have thought she could finally rest easy.Damian was alive but might as well be gone, and between Adrian and me there was now a raw, bleeding wound that would never heal.She thought I'd never forgive Adrian. That in the end, the woman who married the Don and became Donna could only be her.She'd forgotten, maybe. Back then I gave Adrian up because I wanted a quiet life.But now, everyone in the underworld