“I-I can’t,” Gift said. Sukhon made a distressed sound, her expression growing pained once more. This time, it was Gift who made a pleading sound. “Not yet. But I’ll sit here with you. I want to talk to you. I want to know the whole story. Where you’ve been. What happened to you. If you tell me that, then maybe we can leave together. But I-I need to know the whole story. Can you please tell me what happened? I thought you were dead?”
She hesitated, wiping the palm of one hand on her jeans in an agitated motion. She looked back and forth between Park and Anchali then whined, pacing back and forth again like a caged animal.
Anchali was right. This woman wasn’t a threat. Both Park and Anchali could have disarmed her in mere moments, if necessary. Anchali clearly wanted this meeting. Maybe she, too, wanted to know how it was that Sukhon was still alive.
Park slowly bent to place his gun on the coffee table, raising his hands in surrender, before slowly moving to sit in the other armchair beside Anchali.
Gift took a seat and patted the space beside him, giving the woman an encouraging smile.
Park prayed Gift could reason with the woman. He didn’t want to have to kill Gift’s birth mother in front of him just as he got her back.
Sukhon hesitated for another moment, then seemed to make a decision, inching towards Gift, then finally sitting. She sat angled her body towards him, her knees pressed together and both hands holding the gun in her lap like she might be able to ignore Park and Anchali.
She gazed at Gift with a blind adoration that spoke of madness. Then she jerked forward, wrapping her arms around him in a vine-like grip.
Gift stiffened, then melted into her, hugging her back just as fiercely, letting his eyes fall shut. Fear shot through Park like electricity. What if Gift chose to leave with her thinking he was saving Park and Anchali?
The worry lasted only as long as it took for Gift to open his eyes and meet Park’s gaze, expression bleak. Gift pitied this woman. They all did.
When Sukhon released him, Gift smiled. “I look like you.”
She smiled back, and Park saw the damage to her teeth. Someone had neglected this woman for years. Decades, even.
Kendrick.What the fuck did you do?
Gift looked pained, but she didn’t seem to notice, so enamored of him, fussing over him like he was still a newborn, touching him wherever she could.
“Can you tell me what happened to you? To me?” He gently took the gun from her lap and set it beside them, taking both her hands in his. “You’re the only one who can tell me the whole truth. Will you?”
Her gaze flinched to Park and Anchali once more, like she expected an attack or, at the very least, a protest, but she gave a jerky nod when Gift smiled encouragingly.
“How do you know Marshall Kendrick?” he asked. Her face contorted, her rage and disgust evident. Tears sprang to Gift’s eyes as he whispered, “What did he do to you?”
Her expression softened at Gift’s tears. She pulled her hands free to wipe at them.
With one more hostile look at Anchali, she began to tell her story, her voice flat. “I worked for Mr. Kendrick as his secretary. It was a good job for someone like me. I had never finished school. I married when I was sixteen. I was good at my job…but he took advantage. He didn’t hire me for my skill. He forced himself on me. Made me do things to keep my job, even though he knew I was a married woman. Then my husband disappeared and things just got worse.”
Christ.
Sukhon’s pain was Gift’s, more tears already sliding down those soft, full cheeks, so much like his mother’s, even as underweight as she was. Park desperately wanted to comfort him, to hold him, to touch him, to help him somehow. But he couldn’t. He could only trust that Gift could work through this.
How far had Kendrick gone to keep Sukhon under his thumb? Had he wanted her badly enough to make her husband disappear?
Gift held her hand tighter, nodding encouragingly for her to go on.
She looked at Anchali, then back to Gift. “After Anchali came, it was better…for a little while. He couldn’t touch me as much then. I was terrified he would find out I was pregnant and force me to get rid of it. Of you.”
There it was.
Gift’s mouth fell open, the color draining from his face. “Kendrick…is… Is he my father?”
Sukhon looked startled at his question but shook her head rapidly. “No. No. It was my husband’s baby but that wouldn’t stop Marshall from forcing me to get rid of it. He already commented frequently that I was growing fatter every day.”
Gift looked relieved to know he shared no part of Kendrick’s DNA but made a hostile sound at his mother’s admission, blowing out a breath through his nose. “Bastard.”
Sukhon patted his cheek again. “When I started to realize Marshall was corrupt, I went to Anchali…who I thought was my friend. She didn’t believe me.”
She turned a frigid glare on Anchali, who stayed quiet, even though it was obvious she desperately wanted to defend herself.
