He pointed at Lorelei with a shaking hand.

"She seduced me! It really had nothing to do with me!"

Dante bent down and picked one of the reports off the floor.

His fingers were trembling.

He stared at the words on the page as the blood drained from his face inch by inch.

"That's impossible… It's fake. It has to be fake..."

Then his head jerked up.

His voice was almost out of control.

"If I really had azoospermia, then how could Carmela Russo have ever gotten pregnant? She loved me that much."'

"She would never have betrayed me."

Someone in the crowd let out a cold laugh.

"Don, that question? We brought you the answer to it, too."

The crowd parted.

A doctor was escorted forward, and he let out a long sigh.

Then he drew a yellowed report out of a file envelope.

"This is your premarital exam from a decade ago. Don, you really did have azoospermia,"

He paused.

His voice grew complicated. "As for how Donna was able to conceive... She has a rare condition."

"She is one of the very few women in the world capable of activating your sperm."

"In other words, she was the only person on this earth who could ever bear your child."

He looked at Dante and hesitated. "From what I recall... Donna was already eight months along."

"At the very least, you still had one biological child. You should have cherished her--and that baby."

The words landed.

And Dante looked as if he had been struck by lightning, his entire body locking up

Then, in the next breath, he stumbled backward and dropped to the floor.

His lips had gone bloodless.

His voice shook violently. "My child... My child..."

He clawed at his own hair like he was losing his grip. "What did I do...What did I do... killed my own child with my own hands..."'

The whole room had fallen silent.

And right then, footsteps sounded at the entrance.

A group of uniformed officers walked in.

"Lorelei Bishop."

"You are under arrest for filing a false police report and fabricating injuries. You'll need to come with us."

Lorelei's face changed completely

She broke down sobbing and threw herself at Dante. "Don! Save me! I don't want to go!"

"I don't want to go to jail! You said you'd protect me!"

But Dante only slowly lifted his head, his eyes ice cold now, not a trace of warmth left in them. "Lorelei Bishop. You lied to me."

"For a woman like you. For a bastard child, I hurt the person who loved me most. And I killed the only child I could ever have."

His voice was terrifyingly low. "I am not going to let you walk away from this."

Lorelei froze.

Then she screamed in total collapse, "Dante! You can't do this to me! I did everything for you-"

Her voice was hauled away with her.

And then it was gone

The wedding ended in absolute ruin.

Dante lurched to his feet like a man unhinged and seized his assistant by the collar.

"Where's Carmela?! Where is she?! I'm going to find her!"

"I'll beg her! I'll give her anything she wants! The business, the money, all of it! As long as she forgives me."

His assistant's expression turned bitter.

After a moment of silence, he finally said in a low voice, "Don.... Donna is already gone."

Dante stared blankly. "Gone?"

The assistant nodded. "She left a message for you before she left." 

Dante's throat tightened. "What did she say?"

The assistant lowered his head. "She said, 'From this day forward, even in life and in death, you and I will never meet again.’”

The sentence dropped.

And it was as if everything inside Dante had been ripped out at once.

In the days that followed, scandal after scandal exploded around the Salvatore family.

His azoospermia, the sham wedding, and the dirty dealings inside his business all spread across the internet overnight.

Partners pulled out one after another

The stock price collapsed

Within just a few short months, the company went into bankruptcy liquidation.

Its assets were carved up clean by the very rivals who had once waited for him to fall.

People said that the last time anyone laid eyes on Dante, he was sitting alone in an empty office.

On the desk in front of him sat a cheap, plain silver ring.

The men from those rival families wired the money into my account.

I took it and used the funds to open a coffee shop.

It wasn't large.

But it was quiet.

The sunlight there was good every single day.

I ground the beans myself and welcomed my own customers.

Life slowly settled into something calm.

Later I heard Dante had sold off everything he had left.

He went begging everywhere.

All he wanted was one chance to see me.

Some people said he knelt in the rain all night long.

Others said he had gone half-mad, repeating the same sentence over and over.

"I was wrong." 

But I never looked back.

Some mistakes can't be erased with regret. 

And I had finally learned how to live without him.