Chapter 15
Ipressed the bell and waited.
The door opened a moment later, and there she was.
Camilla Sterling looked exactly as she always did.
Immaculate. Every strand of hair in place, every detail of her clothing chosen with care.
She had spent her entire life perfecting the art of appearing untouched by anything.
She needed to be the most sophisticated woman in every room, the one nobody could catch off guard, the one nobody could imagine falling apart.
It was a convincing act, unless you were one of the few who had seen the cracks. Unless you’d been the one she screamed at, her face contorted, blaming you for sins that were never yours, only to have her smooth your hair the next morning and whisper that she loved you.
I never held a grudge.
She had suffered enough in her life.
More than enough. And my existence had only ever added to it.
I had always been ready to absorb whatever she threw at me. To endure every lash, every demand, every impossible expectation. To give her whatever she wanted, whatever she needed.
If it eased her suffering, even for a moment, I would have cut myself open without a second thought.
Because she had given me a home when I had nowhere else to go. She had given me her name when I could have grown up without one. She had kept me off the streets when nobody else had been willing to claim me.
She had given me a life.
How could I forget that?
How could I ever pretend I didn’t owe her?
I owed her more than I could ever repay.
What I didn’t owe her was my wife.
Alessia should never have been dragged into the orbit of my mother’s world.
She was—and always would be—the only person I had ever truly called mine.
The one person I wanted beside me when everything else fell apart.
The one I had promised myself I would keep untouched by the poison that had seeped through my family for years.
But my mother had reached into my sanctuary and dragged Alessia into the mess.
And the most gut-wrenching part was that I had been blind to it. I didn’t see it. I failed to protect the one person who mattered the most.
A hard tension gathered behind my teeth. I held myself still, forcing the anger back down before it could spill into my voice.
My mother stood there, already wearing a dazzling smile. She stepped toward me with open arms, her perfume reaching me before she did, and wrapped me in an embrace.
I stood stiff beneath it, my arms hanging uselessly at my sides. I couldn’t bring myself to return the gesture. Every instinct in me wanted to step back, to put distance between us, but I stayed where I was and let her play out the welcome she had prepared.
“Oh, what a pleasant surprise,” she purred, pulling away with a soft laugh. Her hands remained on my shoulders while she studied my face, the warmth in her smile never reaching her eyes. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“Why are you surprised?” The words came out colder than I intended, but I didn’t soften them. “I told you I was coming. I told you we needed to talk.”
The smile on her lips held, but I watched the slightest hesitation pass through her expression. I caught it.
I’d spent too many years learning to recognize what my mother tried to hide.
When I saw her at Alessia’s workplace, all I wanted was to get her out of there.
She didn’t belong there. She had no right to step into her world, no right to bring her poison anywhere near her.
So I told her we would talk later, and I poured every second that followed into Alessia, clinging to the desperate hope that I still had a chance. That I still had time to fix us.
Now Alessia was gone.
And I had nothing but time to finally confront the woman who never should have been near her in the first place.
I had always kept them in separate worlds. I never wanted them to meet, never wanted my mother’s presence contaminating Alessia’s life.
The only time their paths crossed was at our reception, one night spent surrounded by people, smiling for photographs and announcing our marriage to the world.
Afterward, I built the wall again.
I thought it was high enough.
I thought it would hold.
Then, almost a year ago, Alessia told me she had run into my mother.
My mother, who was supposedly too sick to do anything beyond rest, had still refused to cancel one of her precious tea parties. Instead, she had asked Alessia to help her.
I still remembered the way my stomach dropped when she said it.
I refused immediately.
“No,” I told Alessia, the answer leaving me before she had even finished explaining. “Absolutely not. You are not getting involved in this. I’ll hire a team of planners. I’ll handle everything.”
Alessia had looked at me with that stubborn softness I had never known how to resist.
“I want to help her, Cassian. It’s just this one time.”
I should have heard the warning hidden inside those words.
Because it wasn’t just once.
It became a pattern, a secret commitment that unfolded right under my nose.
I should have fought harder. I should have been more vigilant. I should have burned that bridge between them myself.
Every day, I uncovered another way I had failed Alessia, another mistake I had made that I could never take back.
She waved me off. “I’m always surprised to see my son.”
I barely held back a flinch.
Son.
I hated hearing her call me that. Hated the claim buried inside those two syllables, the reminder that no matter how far I ran or how much I tried to build a life beyond this house, I would always be the boy who owed her something.
Every time she said it, I felt that invisible debt close around me again, pulling tight until breathing took effort.
“Can we talk inside?” I asked. The words came out strained, thinner than I wanted them to. I cleared my throat and forced myself to meet her eyes, refusing to let her see how badly I wanted to turn around and leave.
Her eyes narrowed as she studied me. She took in my face, my rigid posture, the tension I couldn’t quite hide. Whatever she saw seemed to satisfy some private question, because she stepped aside without another word.
I crossed the threshold, and my chest constricted.
The instant I stepped inside, the air changed. Familiar pressure closed in from every direction, and I had to fight the instinct to retreat. Nothing had changed. The same walls. The same hallway. The same rooms that had once felt impossibly large when I was a child with nowhere else to go.
My childhood home.
Calling it bittersweet would have been too kind.
These walls had given me a roof when I was a child with nowhere else to go. I should have been grateful for them. Instead, they became the place that taught me to despise the person I was.
This was the place where my mother’s moods could turn without warning, where one wrong word could bring a storm down on me.
Where every scream taught me to brace for what came next.
Where love and pain had always existed side by side, so tangled together that I could never tell where one ended and the other began.
“What would you like to eat?” she asked, turning toward me with a little gasp. “Should I make your favorite risotto?”
Risotto wasn’t my favorite.
It had been my father’s.
I forced my throat to work. “Ma…”
She turned to face me fully, her attention sharpening beneath that pleasant expression. “Yes, son?” she asked, giving the word a softness that made my stomach twist.
This time, I couldn’t hide the flinch. It cut through me before I could stop it, swift and instinctive, dragging every buried thing to the surface.
I closed my eyes, drawing a steadying breath. This wasn’t about me. This wasn’t about the old debts or the ghosts in this house.
When I opened my eyes again, whatever hesitation had held me back was gone. “Let’s sit and talk.” The words came out calm now, stripped of the strain that had gripped me moments ago.
She straightened, her eyes sharpening as they moved over my face. A beat later, her smile returned, smooth and practiced. “Of course,” she said softly. “Let’s sit.”
She crossed to the couch and lowered herself onto it with effortless elegance. I took the chair opposite her, leaning forward with my hands clasped between my knees.
I didn’t bother easing into it.
“Why did you make her work for you?”
She stared at me for a beat before a soft, incredulous laugh escaped her. “Oh, Cassian. Like I told you, I didn’t make her work. She barely did anything. She tossed out a few suggestions here and there, that’s all.” Her smile thinned. “You’re turning this into something it wasn’t.”
I felt heat creep beneath my skin. “Am I?”
“Yes. You are.” She lifted one hand in a careless little gesture. “She offered her opinion. I listened. That’s all that happened.”
My fingers curled against my palms.
“Then why didn’t you come to me?” I demanded, leaning forward. “If it was so innocent, why did you go behind my back?”
Her lips curved faintly. “I know how busy you get when you’re working, son. You’re exactly like your father.”
The comparison hit me with the force of a physical blow.
I wanted to snap back, to tell her she was wrong, to insist I was nothing like him. The protest rose so violently that my hand curled into a fist, my nails digging into my palm.
But the truth cut through me just as quickly.
Didn’t I do the same?
Didn’t I bury myself in work and leave my wife alone?
I forced the thought down before it could take root. I wasn’t going to let her use my own guilt to drag the conversation somewhere I didn’t want it to go.
I held her eyes. “Why did you go to my wife?”
Her expression sharpened. Irritation slipped through the pleasant facade she’d been wearing since I walked in, pulling the corners of her mouth into a thin line. She hadn’t expected me to turn the conversation back on her.
“I didn’t go to her, Cassian. You know I ran into her that first time.” Her voice sharpened around my name, defensive now. “And after that…” She lifted one shoulder, dismissing the rest with a small, careless motion. “It just continued. It’s not a crime to help your family.”