She steps closer to the bed, her movements slow, unhurried, like there is no danger in this room for her at all. “Because my son confuses weakness with love,” she says. “Because every generation of men in this family chooses badly when they let their hearts lead. Because I have spent my life cleaning up after that mistake.”
I shake my head, staring at her. “You liked me.”
Another smile. Smaller now. “I understood you,” she says. “That is not the same thing.”
The distinction makes me sick.
I look at Alena on the floor, then back at her. “You framed her.”
“She made it easy.” Her voice is low and steady, which somehow makes it worse. “Besides, I cannot have him marrying a hooker and soiling our family name.”
For a second, I don’t understand the words.
Her words turn to static in my ears. I hear them. But they don’t make sense in the room with the machines and the IV and Alena bleeding on the floor.
Then they do.
And something inside me goes completely still.
“What?” I whisper.
Her face twists. Not dramatically. Just enough to show what’s been under all that softness this whole time.
“I’m not a?—”
“Stop your lies,” she seethes. The sudden venom in her voice makes me flinch. She steps closer to the bed, pale and shaking but still terrifyingly controlled. “I have heard those filthy things you said. I know exactly what you are.”
My mouth opens. Closes.
“My son can rarely hide anything from me, you know,” Daria says. “I’m clever, I catch up. And when I heard him mumble your name in his sleep, I knew I had to find out all about you. That’s when I found the tape you sent to him.”
She shoots me a disgusted look.
“That wasn’t even for him,” I say.
Her lips curl into a sneer. “Then I thought right about you.”
For one impossible second, I am back in that office, hearing the laughter, the whispers, the word hooker tossed at me like something rotten. Only this is worse. Because this woman had fed me snacks. Looked at me with kind eyes. Called me by name.
And all along she had already decided what I was.
“You poisoned me because of the recordings?” I say.
“Because of what they proved,” she snaps. “You think I care about some cheap audio? No. I care that a woman who sells filth with her voice thought she could walk into my son’s life and become permanent. You’re nothing but a whore. That’s all you’ll ever be.”
The shame hits fast, hot, ugly.
Then anger burns through it.
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know enough.”
Her voice drops again, quieter now, almost trembling with the force of what she’s holding back. “I know what decent women do not say into microphones for money. I know what kind of men consume that kind of filth. I know what happens when women like you mistake fascination for status and start imagining rings and houses and names that were never meant for them.”
Her eyes flick once to my stomach. Or where it was.
My whole body goes cold. “Alena was right,” I say, because I need to hurt her now. “You wanted him looking the wrong way.”
