Chapter 61 #2
My mum’s murder never happened. Everything I’d seen while locked in that panic room was a lie. The unknown man who had brutally murdered my mother had been working for her the entire time. The man whose eyes haunted my nightmares. The men I’d sworn vengeance on stood at Mum’s back, protecting her.
A sound tore out of my chest, somewhere between a laugh and a wail. I wanted to scream, to demand answers, to ask how she could stand there knowing what she’d done to me—to us.
“Mum?”
She turned slowly, her hand steady as it pressed harder into the side of Vadin’s head. Whatever hope I’d been clinging to that this wasn’t real, shattered. My heart broke all over again, the pieces scattered across the floor.
There was no softness in my mother’s eyes. No recognition, relief, or longing. Only cold, sharpened hatred aimed at the man at the end of her gun, and something guarded and unreadable when her gaze finally locked with mine.
“You’re dead,” I said, the words flat. “I buried you. I grieved you. I wished that I’d died instead of you.”
Her jaw tightened. “I know.”
That single sentence did more damage than the gun ever could.
A whimper came from somewhere to my right. The sound cut through me like a blade and jerked me out of my trance.
Lip.
I turned my head and saw him at the table. His small hands were curled into fists, and his shoulders shook as quiet, terrified sobs slipped out. Myles was clutching him to his side, but Lip’s eyes were on the gun and the adults who were supposed to keep him safe, and failing spectacularly.
My stomach dropped.
Not again.
He’d already lost too much. Already seen more violence, more death, than a child ever should. And now this…another moment that would carve itself into him forever if I didn’t stop it.
I straightened, gently pulling free of Nash’s hold. My legs trembled, but I forced myself to stand anyway. Forced myself to breathe. Forced myself to remember who I’d become.
Not the girl who’d lost her mother, but the woman who had learned how to survive without her.
“Put the gun down,” I said.
My voice didn’t shake, and my mother’s eyes flicked back to me, sharp and assessing like she was measuring how much I’d changed in her absence.
“You need to stay out of this,” she said.
“No, I won’t.”
I stepped around my father, who was standing but unmoving. He didn’t try to stop me, but I felt Nash following me like a shadow.
“Ren, just walk away.”
“I can’t do that.”
“You don’t understand, and it doesn’t concern you,” she said, the first little crack showing in her steely exterior.
“Yes, it does. It always has. You made it my business the day you chose to have me.”
I took a step forward. Then another.
She looked at me, her hand shaking, tears shimmering in her eyes.
“I need to do this.”
“Maybe, but not here. There’s a child in this room who has already been through hell, and I won’t let him become collateral damage for your personal vendetta.”
Her grip tightened.
“Ren—” Nash whispered the warning. He could see her unraveling as much as I could.
“I’ve got this,” I said quietly, never taking my eyes off my mother.
This was between her and me.
Queen to queen.
“I don’t know why you came here tonight or why you chose to stay dead,” I said, the words burning as they left me. “But whatever war you think you’re finishing tonight—it doesn’t end like this.”
Something flickered in her gaze then. Pain. Regret. Fear maybe. Her lip trembled. She looked at me, and I saw something akin to hope in her eyes.
“You sent me to Wayward, didn’t you?”
I glanced around the room and landed on Dean Henry, who was far too calm. There was an unspoken apology on his face that felt like another blow. He knew. He had to have known. But he didn’t say a word.
“Yes. I told Neil to bring you here,” Mum answered.
“Because you wanted me to learn the truth of who I was, to be protected, and to become strong?”
Tears spilled down her cheeks. “Yes.”
“Well, I have. Look at me.” Her entire body trembled as she looked at me once more. “Put. The. Gun. Down,” I said again. “If you ever loved me—if any part of you still does—don’t make me live with this, too.”
The room held its breath.
Mum exhaled. It came out broken. Not loud or dramatic. But, like a breath she’d been holding for years. Her eyes never left mine.
For a moment, everything but her disappeared. The men. The history pressed into every corner of the room. There was only us. Two women forged by the same fire, standing on opposite sides of a choice neither of us should have had to make.
“You look like her,” Mum said quietly. My heart stuttered, unsure what she meant. “Not the girl I left,” she continued, her voice pained. “The woman I dreamed you’d become.”
The words hurt more than she would ever know.
She looked at Vadin and slowly moved the gun away from his temple.
“I will not make you watch me become a monster.”
My knees threatened to give out.
This wasn’t the reunion of my dreams. There were no apologies that could fix this. No arms reaching across the room. No collapsing into each other’s grief. This grated against my soul and cut me a million times.
I blinked, and for the first time since I’d walked into the room, I saw the woman I remembered. This was my mother stepping back, not because she was weak, but because I was strong enough to demand it, and there was enough of her left to listen.
As she lowered the weapon, I understood two irreversible truths.
My mother was alive.
And nothing would ever be the same again.