Chapter 18 #2
All she did was pause at the foot of the staircase, her gaze lingering on it for a long, unreadable moment before she turned and walked out without a backward glance.
That day, I accepted a brutal truth. Aldric Quinn had built my reality on a foundation of lies, carefully constructing a childhood that would shape me into the perfect instrument for his legacy.
But about one thing, he had been painfully, unequivocally honest.
I did not have a mother.
After my sixteenth birthday, things shifted.
Aldric fell ill.
And she came back.
That was our first official meeting. When her eyes landed on me, they instantly welled with tears.
Mine just narrowed. But my grandfather’s training was impeccable.
I extended my hand, my posture perfect, my voice cool and detached.
“Alessia Quinn. A pleasure to meet you.” She stared at my outstretched hand, a flicker of pain passing over her face before she covered it with a sad, resigned smile.
Then she took my hand. Her grip was surprisingly firm.
“Sariah Quinn. The pleasure is mine.”
She stayed until Aldric recovered.
Then she disappeared again.
The disappointment I felt wasn’t that she had left. Not exactly. It was the bitter, childish irritation of realizing that my grandfather had survived when, for years, some quiet and shameful part of me had wished he wouldn’t.
Apparently, my silent prayers had been inadequate.
Four years later, my wish was finally granted.
I was sitting in a lecture hall when the call came.
He was dead.
Fucking finally.
His funeral was a massive, somber spectacle, crowded with every titan of industry performing the solemn and appropriate rituals of grief. My mother and I were the only two people in that black-clad crowd who seemed incapable of pretending.
When I asked for five minutes alone with the casket, everyone assumed I wanted a final farewell. Tears, perhaps. A whispered goodbye. The private grief of a granddaughter saying goodbye to the man who had raised her.
They had no idea about the flask of brandy tucked inside my coat. They didn’t hear the calm, conversational tone I used to detail, point by point, how his legacy would be dismantled. And they certainly didn’t see the smile I’d been suppressing for twenty years finally break free.
I thought I was finished with the Quinn name then. Finished with the house, the empire, the ghosts, all of it. I thought death had finally cut the last thread tying me to the life he’d designed for me.
My mother, unfortunately, had other plans.
The moment I graduated and began the real work of building my business plan, Sariah Quinn materialized in my life.
Dinner invitations began appearing. Then suggestions for “bonding trips” to places she’d been, places she apparently believed could somehow compensate for sixteen years of absence.
She became a sudden, persistent presence, trying to cram a lifetime of mother-daughter memories into the space I was trying to clear for my future.
She poured out her side of the story: the pressure, the rebellion, the bargain.
She insisted that, unplanned or not, she had always loved me in her own way.
That she was different now. Then came the stories—her travels, the cities she’d lived in, the people she’d met, the person she’d supposedly become somewhere along the way.
I nodded when I was meant to nod. Made the appropriate sounds of interest. Asked the occasional question.
But my mind was a million miles away, calculating burn rates, analyzing competitor agencies, and mentally rehearsing my pitch for the venture capitalists I had lined up.
Her voice became little more than ambient noise against the spreadsheet taking shape behind my eyes.
I tried to tolerate it.
To let her play the part of the mother she seemed so desperate to perform.
Rationally, I understood. She’d been forced into a situation she never wanted.
It made sense that she hadn’t wanted me then.
Her desires had changed; now she claimed to want a connection. I thought I could grant her that much.
But every forced lunch, every overshared anecdote from her nomadic life, every painfully basic question about my life grated on me like sandpaper.
My skin would crawl with a restless, burning irritation.
I endured it for a few years out of a sense of twisted obligation, until my patience finally snapped.
I finally asked her, point-blank, what she wanted from me.
What was the actual objective of all these meetings?
She stared at me as though I’d slapped her, genuine shock spreading across her arresting, siren-like features. After a long silence, the truth tumbled out. She wanted me to get married. She wanted an heir to carry the family name.
A slow, genuine smile spread across my face for the first time in her presence.
Like father, like daughter.
The Quinn obsession with legacy was a poison in the blood, and she was just another carrier.
We struck a deal that day. I would attend the arranged marriage meetings she curated, and in exchange, she would disappear from my life.
A straightforward transaction.
I had zero intention of ever having a child to feed that legacy. I made the deal for one reason: to make her go away.
At least, that was what I told myself.
The truth was harder to admit.
Some small, traitorous part of me had wanted to know her.
I wanted to hear the stories I pretended to find unbearable. I wanted to understand the woman who had spent most of my childhood as a stranger and then, years too late, decided she wanted a place in my life.
I just couldn’t admit that to myself.
So I played along.
I went to the meetings. I listened to her candidates. I sat through one meeting after another, offering the same cold patience each time, pretending I was there because she had asked me to be and nothing more.
Until I lost patience with the entire thing.
Not a single candidate had been remotely tolerable. Every meeting left me more convinced that this ridiculous arrangement was a waste of my time. The last one finally pushed me past the point of endurance.
I was done.
I couldn’t sacrifice another evening to my mother’s twisted little legacy project, sitting across from strangers she’d decided might be worthy of carrying the Quinn name forward while I tried to pretend I gave a damn.
So I walked away.
And then I woke up here.
Married.
Sometimes, life’s sense of humor is so brutally ironic, so perfectly circular, that all you can do is laugh along, even when you’re the butt of the joke.
I tilted my head. “Did you need something from me?”
She narrowed her eyes. “I can’t visit my own daughter after she’s been through one of the most traumatic incidents of her life?”
I put the water bottle back in the fridge.
“The word I’d use to describe my marriage is ‘boring.’”
My Angry Birds level was absurdly high.
You didn’t achieve that without profound, soul-crushing boredom.
“I was talking about your accident,” she clarified, her voice sharpening. “And the amnesia.”
I shook my head and turned to face her.
“Felicity talks too much.”
She waved a dismissive hand. “Don’t blame her. My tears are a potent weapon.”
Her gaze sobered, the mischief draining just enough from her face for something more searching to take its place. “So it’s true? You really don’t remember the last three years?”
I gave her a thin, knowing smile. “Why? Did we have some tearful reconciliation during the years I’m missing?”
She nodded. There was a sly little glint in her eye. “Yes, actually. And I believe the word ‘love’ was thrown around here and there.”
I straightened, my expression flat. “I’ve decided the last three years were one prolonged head injury. I’ve finally recovered, so I’d appreciate it if you forgot everything I did or said during that unfortunate period.”
She shook her head, a smirk tugging at her mouth. “Well, it’s good to see you alive. And your personality, regrettably, intact.”
She turned toward the door.
“Mother.”
She pivoted back, a perfect, practiced smile already in place. “Yes, daughter?”
I mirrored her smile, sweet and lethal. “Leave the key.”
Her smile vanished.
With a dramatic roll of her eyes, she dug into her purse and slapped a single key onto the counter. “There. Happy?”
She turned again, a little quicker this time.
“And all the backups you made.”
She stopped.
Her eyes narrowed. Then, with the reluctant resignation of someone being forced to surrender classified information, she fished two more keys from the depths of her purse.
“I don’t have any more.”
I kept my smile in place. “The one in your hair, too.”
She stared at me. Then, with an exasperated huff, she reached up and unpinned the final key from her bun.
“Of course.” She dropped it onto the counter with the others. “I can never hide anything from you, can I?”
You hid yourself from me for more than half my life.
She turned to leave. I let her hand settle on the cool metal of the doorknob before I spoke.
“About Cassian.”
She paused, turning only halfway. “What about him?”
“What happened?” I asked.
She stared at me for a long moment, her gaze searching, almost unnervingly intense. Then she shrugged.
“I always assumed you went for his looks. Nothing more.”
I gave a single, slow nod.
“That does make more sense, doesn’t it?”
A short, dry laugh escaped her, and finally, she left.
The moment the front door clicked shut, I exhaled, pulled out my phone, and scheduled the locks to be changed.
I didn’t trust that woman one bit.
“I couldn’t get the cocktail recipe,” Naija said, frustration threading through her voice as I opened the door and we stepped outside. The icy chill hit me immediately. The parking lot stretched beneath a washed-out sky, rows of cars gleaming dully beneath the pale afternoon sun.
“Is it one of those secret-recipe things he’s not allowed to share?” I asked, handing her the car keys.