I waited, barely breathing, watching Xander struggle with whatever came next.
His earlier admission hung in the air like smoke, impossible to grasp but impossible to ignore. My pulse thudded in my temples, each heartbeat marking another second of unbearable tension.
He moved to the window, his back partially turned, one hand bracing against the frame. The city lights beyond the glass cast shadows across his features, making him look older, more worn. His shoulders carried a weight I hadn't fully understood until this moment.
"You're wondering about Bianca," he said finally, his voice rough. "Whether her obsession is over now that she's arrested and whether we're finally safe from whatever delusion drove her to take our daughter."
I hadn't asked the question out loud, but he'd read it on my face. Or maybe he'd simply known it was there, waiting beneath everything else.
"She seemed so certain," I admitted carefully. "So convinced that you'd done something unforgivable. I assumed it was jealousy, possessiveness, her inability to accept that you'd moved on."
"It was all of those things." Xander turned to face me, and I saw the cost of this conversation written in every line of his body. The tension in his jaw, the darkness beneath his eyes, the way his hands gripped the windowsill like it was the only thing keeping him upright. "But Bianca didn't invent her certainty. She latched onto something real—something that happened while she and I were still together."
My chest tightened, a cold knot forming beneath my ribs. "What do you mean?"
"There was someone else." He paused, choosing his words with visible effort. His throat worked as he swallowed. "During my relationship with Bianca. Someone I shouldn't have let close. She has changed everything."
The confession landed like a blow to my stomach. An affair. He was talking about an affair.
"You cheated on her?"
"It wasn't that simple." His jaw tightened, muscles flexing beneath the skin. "I wouldn’t call it cheating or something… That woman… Lora. She was with one of my business partners but got obsessed with me, and I… But yes, Bianca found out."
I listened carefully, noting what he said and what he avoided. No details about who this woman was or what had happened to her. My fingernails dug into my palms as frustration mingled with dread.
"That's why she hates you so much," I said slowly. "Not just because you moved on—because you betrayed her first."
His eyes met mine, dark and troubled. "Bianca's hatred runs deeper than wounded pride. She broke with me for Victor, and she believes I'm responsible for that and for what happened next. She thinks I destroyed several lives to protect my own secrets."
"Did you?"
The question hung between us like a blade.
"I don't know anymore." His voice dropped to barely above a whisper. "I've spent years trying to understand what really happened, what I caused and what I couldn't have prevented."
My blood ran cold. "Xander, what are you talking about? What happened to this woman?"
"She… disappeared." The word fell from his lips like a stone into still water. "One day she was there, and then she wasn't. No goodbye, no explanation. Just gone."
"People don't just disappear." I saw how hard he tried to find softer words and still avoided the details.
"This one did, and Bianca has always believed it was because of me." He exhaled slowly, the breath leaving him like something vital escaping. "She's spent years collecting fragments, building theories on how it could happened, convincing herself that exposing me would somehow give her leverage—over Victor, her marriage, and the life she regrets choosing."
"The coordinated attacks on your company," I said, my voice trembling despite my efforts to steady it. "The investors who fled when I started asking questions. Are they connected to Lora?"
"I believe so. Someone has been protecting these secrets for years since she… was gone—making sure certain questions never get asked." He ran a hand through his hair, the gesture almost desperate. "Gerald Morrison is involved somehow, that’s for sure. He and Lora… had a connection, so I believe he can see it as a revenge to me or something."
"Gerald Morrison?" This name, again. I heard it so often lately, that it was hard to believe now he wasn’t involved in all the events and problems happening to us. "He knew her?"
"He introduced us." Xander's expression hardened into something unreadable. "At a gala, years ago. Nothing special, just official representation, but then—everything went wrong and finally collapsed. Now I see, the disaster was inevitable."
The air in the room felt heavier, charged with revelations that hadn't quite been spoken. I could see him wrestling with himself, wanting to tell me everything but afraid of what it would cost.
"Xander." I stepped closer, close enough to touch him but holding back, my hands trembling at my sides. "Could any of this pose a threat to me and the twins today?"
His hesitation was answer enough. The silence stretched for three heartbeats, four, five. I watched his face as he calculated risks and consequences, weighing honesty against protection.
"I thought these secrets were buried deep enough that they couldn't hurt anyone anymore," he said finally, his voice cracking. "But whoever is orchestrating these attacks has resources I can't trace. Power I can't match. They've been waiting for any sign that the truth might surface."
"What truth? What really happened to her?"
He met my eyes, and I saw the fear he'd been hiding for so long—raw, primal, the terror of a man watching everything he loved slip through his fingers.
"The board mentioned rumors," I pressed, my voice breaking. "They mentioned a woman. Is that her? Is Lora the woman who influenced the situation our family is struggling with now?"
Xander's expression shifted. The control he'd been clinging to finally dissolved, leaving something raw and exposed beneath—vulnerable in a way I'd never witnessed before.
"Okay, I will tell you about Lora, everything, with no hints or vagueness" he said, his voice stripped of everything familiar.
I waited, my heart pounding against my ribs so hard it hurt.
He took a breath that seemed to draw from somewhere deep and broken inside him.
"She is someone who once..." He stopped, the words catching in his throat. His eyes glistened in the dim light. "...mattered."