I Was His Wife, Then His Widow, Then No One's But My Own novel Chapter 462

As Finnegan spoke, his voice cracked, overwhelmed by the crushing weight of his sins.

"Mom, do you realize she wasn't even thirty yet? She gave me the absolute best years of her youth. And what did I do? I faked my death, assumed another identity, and spent my time keeping another woman company while treating her sacrifices like dirt."

He slowly opened his eyes, the whites heavily bloodshot. Tears pooled in his vision, but they didn't fall. He knew he had lost the right to cry.

"When Cassie was a year old, Nora was kicked out by her family. She had to rent a miserable little apartment. In the dead of winter, the heater broke, a pipe burst, and the place flooded. She had to manage a screaming baby while bailing water out of her living room for an entire night."

His voice dropped to a gutted whisper. "She called me begging for help, and I ignored her. Do you know where I was? I was escorting Seraphina to a luxury charity gala. I was standing in a tailored tuxedo, sipping champagne, while she was drowning in the cold."

Adelaide listened in stunned silence, her face turning paler by the second.

Finnegan let out a broken, agonizing laugh. "The next morning, she was severely sick with a fever, yet she still dragged herself out of bed to drop Cassie off at daycare so she could go to work. She wasn't even a minute late. That was her life, Mom. She lived like that for five grueling years."

By the time he finished, Finnegan was openly sobbing. He buried his face in his hands, his broad shoulders shaking violently as silent, devastating tears tore through him.

The bedroom fell into a heavy, suffocating silence, filled only by the muffled sounds of his weeping.

It took a long time before Adelaide slowly stood up. Her lips parted, wanting to offer some form of maternal comfort, but the words died in her throat.

She was a woman too. Hearing the sheer magnitude of what Nora had survived, she couldn't bring herself to defend her son's actions.

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