Then I put on one of my best suits, and I went into the office.
I sat through a grueling private meeting with my mother, in which I told her everything Devi had told me.
She was upset, of course. Actually, she seemed more upset that all of this had happened at all, than she was about the fact that it was her sister who was behind it.
And the part about Laurinda being my birth mother? And that she’d had an affair with my father? And none of them had ever told me any of this?
It was kind of astonishing how calmly she took all that shit spilling out into the light. As long as I wasn’t planning on telling anyone about it, of course.
“You’re my son,” she said simply. “You will always be my son. Laurinda gave up any right to be a part of this family when she defied Mother’s request that she walk away from that mobster she took up with. End of story.”
But it wasn’t really the end, was it. Because here we were.
“She said you stole me from her,” I said, and my mother’s face entirely changed.
She leaned forward in her chair and looked deep into my eyes. “And you believe that? That I stole a baby from his mother?”
“Honestly… I don’t know what to believe anymore.”
“I was your mother,” she said fiercely. “I was your mother from the moment you were born. Your father, though…” She made a disgusted sound. “Brett was apathetic, at best. He would’ve let Laurinda keep you. And Mother gave her a choice. She could walk away from the family and her inheritance and keep you, and raise you however she liked. But she was never going to be able to take my husband. Brett didn’t want to leave the marriage. Not for her. And not for you. Laurinda gave you up to keep her fortune, Dane. That was the choice she made.”
“That doesn’t seem to be the way she remembers it.”
My mother shook her head. She sat back in her seat. “Of course not. Because after she walked away from you, it got much harder for her. Maybe she didn’t know how much she’d regret giving you up. But it was too late. She took up with that gangster. And she was disowned. She lost everything anyway. She gave you up fornothing. What kind of mother do you think she would have been to you? What kind of life would you have had?”
I didn’t answer that.
“Look what he did to Lex,” she practically hissed. “She never protected her son from that man.”
That much was undeniably true. The things Lex’s father had done to him, I would’ve killed him for, if I could get away with it. But the truth was, Lex’s father scared me. He scared us all.
Including Laurinda, probably.
My mother sighed. “I’m sorry if it hurts you to know that she gave you up, son. But it was the best thing for you. I’ll never see it any other way.” She held my gaze, and I knew she meant it.
I knew she was probably right.
“Why aren’t you pissed at her?” I asked her. “About all of this? The threats?” I wasn’t really pissed at Laurinda, either. I was in shock still, probably. I was most pissed about the fact that Devi had been spied on because of me, that her privacy had been violated. But the rest of it?
I was so used to the rest of it—being a target, being betrayed, being unable to trust—that I was oddly numb about this particular betrayal.
It hurt. But I wasn’t pissed.
I was fucking tired.
“Why would I be angry with her?” my mother said. “Laurinda betrayed me, long ago. She slept with my husband. And she was disowned by this family a long time ago, for a reason. I never expected her to be trustworthy. I never would’ve let her in. That was your mistake. This was sloppy, Dane.”
“I know. I don’t know how this happened.”
“It happened,” my mother said sharply, “because you trusted someone you shouldn’t have. You didn’t listen to the family.”
Was that really how she saw it?
If I’d just listened to her, did every fucking thing she told me to do in life, everything would’ve turned out perfectly?
Ihaddone everything she asked me to, other than this. So I had a relationship with my “aunt” behind my mother’s back. I wasn’t going to apologize for caring about her, for giving her the benefit of the doubt and wanting a relationship with her.
I’d followed all the rules this family had ever laid out for me, except one. And what had it gotten me? Positioned to inherit their legacy, yes. And completely unhappy.
