Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
Luca’s POV
“Are you nervous?”
Leila’s hand rested on my knee—the same knee I hadn’t realized was bouncing my foot against the floor like a drumbeat.
I turned to her, catching the worry etched into her wide green eyes.
“It’s okay to be nervous, Luca,” she said softly. “I’d be nervous too if I was meeting my father again.”
I gave a short, noncommittal laugh and shook my head. Nervous? For my own mother? Correction—that woman. She stopped being my mother the day she walked out of my life.
A glance at my wristwatch told me we’d been sitting here far too long. “I’m not nervous, Leila. What I am…is irritated. The least she could do is keep to time. We’ve been waiting for ten minutes now.”
My mother had contacted me yesterday, begging we see her. And she must have been surprised at how easily I agreed, considering our last encounter. As if on cue, the restaurant door swung open and she walked in.
Her hair was slightly windblown, strands escaping in different directions as if she’d fought the breeze all the way here. Sweat clung to her forehead, her expression just shy of frazzled.
“I’m so sorry,” she said when she stopped at our table. “I had trouble commuting around Manhattan. The city’s even crazier than I remembered.”
“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” Leila replied, already pulling a napkin from her bag and offering it over. My mother took it with a grateful nod, dabbing her forehead and neck before sitting across from us.
Her gaze landed on me, and it lingered, like she was seeing me for the very first time. Her eyes traced my face, full of a pride I didn’t want, but not long enough to make my skin crawl. And beneath that pride was something else. Something harder to ignore.
Love.
It didn’t make sense. How could you love your son and still leave him—ten years old—alone with his father, knowing exactly what kind of man he was?
“My handsome boy.” My mother’s voice was soft, trembling, and I caught the slight beading of tears on her lower eyelids before she quickly wiped them away.
“I never much cared for the news, but I started watching just to catch a glimpse of you. Imagine my pride and joy when I saw you thriving. And it pained me every day that I couldn’t be there to watch you grow up… to thrive in person.”
“Well, that was your own doing, wasn’t it?” I didn’t mean for it to sound cold, but the words came out before I could stop them. Her expression faltered, sadness sweeping through her features.
Beside me, Leila tapped my thigh gently, as if telling me to be nice.
I was nice. This was me being nice. If the woman across from me were anyone else—if I hadn’t loved and adored her for the first years of my life—she’d have seen the other side of me by now.
Her gaze shifted to Leila, then back to me. “Is she the one? The reason you called off your wedding?”
I didn’t answer, and she went on.
“I always thought the Moreau girl wasn’t good enough for you.
And when I saw the wedding photoshoot, I knew instantly it couldn’t have been love.
You didn’t look in love with her, Luca. You didn’t look the way you just did when you glanced at her—” she gestured to Leila “—a moment ago. You looked…caged. Just like I was.”
I sucked in a sharp breath, hating how precisely she read me. “I didn’t agree to this meeting so you could play therapist. You said you had something to tell me. I suggest you get on with it—I don’t have all day.”
“I know you hate me, Luca,” her voice cracked, “and you have every right to. But I didn’t want to leave—I swear to you. I would never just abandon you and your brother. I did it because I didn’t have a choice.”
I shook my head. “You had a choice. You had a choice to stay—for me and…” I stopped, the name sticking in my throat like poison. I couldn’t bring myself to say my own brother’s name. “Everyone has a choice, Mother. Always. So don’t give me that bullshit.”
The air turned heavy, tension hanging thick as silence fell. She stared at me with hurt in her eyes, tears threatening to spill. I felt a pang in my chest, but if she was hurting now, it was nothing—absolutely nothing—compared to the hurt I’d carried for the past decade.
Leila shifted beside me, drawing my attention.
“I…I should probably get us something cool to drink,” she said, breaking the silence.
I looked at her and instantly understood what she was doing—giving me space. Leaving me alone with my mother. Because she felt I needed to face this on my own. And maybe I did.
I gave a small nod.
“If you need me, Luca, I’ll be at the counter,” she said softly, her eyes holding a silent plea for me to hear my mother out.
I sighed inwardly.
Once she left, I leaned forward, locking my gaze on my mother. “The only reason I’m here is because of her, as you’ve probably figured out.”
A pained smile flickered across her lips, but she said nothing.
“So,” I said flatly, “what’s your big story? What’s your elaborate excuse for abandoning your kids?”
“I was fifteen when I met my Mate,” my mother began, taking a deep breath as if to steady herself.
“His name was Thomas. Unfortunately, he was a rogue—but not the kind you’ve heard about.
Thomas was different. He was good. He was only a rogue because he defied my father and refused to sell his land to him.
I thought I was going to marry him, but my father forced me into marriage with your father—Alpha of the Manhattan pack—for political reasons.
I had no choice. I had to leave Thomas and marry Maxwell.
Your father would force himself on me every night, treat me like dirt—I hated it, I hated living. I was this close to ending my life.”
My stomach knotted into a pit. I could believe it—my father forcing himself on my mother. I knew what he was capable of. I knew how vile he was. But I didn’t know to what extent. My jaw clenched.
“But that changed when I ran into Thomas again in Manhattan,” she continued.
“We started seeing each other, and around that time, I got pregnant with Victor. I couldn’t tell who the father was then.
But knowing your father, I was certain he wouldn’t just kill Thomas, but my child, if he even suspected I was cheating on him.
So, I cut things off with Thomas until after you were born.
But that’s the thing about the Fated Mate bond…
” A wistful smile spread across her face.
“You can’t run away from it. It keeps pulling you back together.
As long as Thomas remained in Manhattan City, I couldn’t stay away from him. ”
Her smile then turned bitter.
“Long story short, your father found out. He walked into the hotel room where we were…and shot Thomas dead. Right in front of me. Then he exiled me—told me to leave the pack, that it was my punishment for betrayal. I refused. I couldn’t leave my sons in the hands of someone who had forced himself on me and murdered my Mate.
But then he threatened to frame me for Thomas’s death.
And under pack law, the punishment for killing an innocent man is death.
So, it was either die and never see my boys again…
or leave and watch from afar. I chose the latter.
I held on to the hope that one day, you would both know the truth—and I wouldn’t have to hide anymore. ”
A tear slid down her cheek. She used the napkin Leila had given her to wipe it away.
“But when I saw you call off the wedding, I thought this was history repeating itself. Your father was doing to you exactly what mine did to me. Only that you were braver. You are stronger, strong enough to stand up to him. And that gave me the confidence to return.”
Fury slammed into me.
My father had forced our mother away and then lied for years—told us she had woken up one morning, abandoned us, and run off with her lover.
I remembered sitting on the dock every morning after she left, waiting for her to return.
After a week of this, he sat Victor and me down and told us the painful story of how she walked out on us and was never coming back.
No note. Nothing. Then he gave us that bullshit speech about how we “only had each other now”.
Turns out, he was just a chronic liar—someone who had spent twenty-one years making us believe our mother was a deserter.
My pulse pounded in my ears. The air in the room felt too thick, too heavy, like it was pressing me into the chair.
My mother said something I couldn’t hear it. All I could hear was my father’s voice from twenty-one years ago, dripping with false sympathy, feeding us the poison of his story. My hands curled into fists.
“I have to hear it from him,” I said, my voice low as I stood, the chair scraping sharply against the floorboards.
“No.” My mother caught my hand, her voice panicked. Her eyes—wide, frantic—locked on mine. “Please, don’t confront him, Luca. He wouldn’t care that you’re his son. He could hurt you now that you know the truth—a truth that can destroy him.” Her voice cracked. “He’s dangerous, Luca.”
I stared back at her, unblinking. “And I’ve lived with that danger for all my childhood.”