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She pressed a delicate hand to her chest, her breath hitching. “I can’t believe you would say that to me, Duke.”
She didn’t deny it or argue the facts. She just went straight for the wound she knew best how to press on—my guilt.
“After everything I’ve been through. After everything I sacrificed for you.” She shook her head, blinking rapidly as if she were holding back tears. “How could you throw such hateful words at your own mother?”
I let out a slow breath, feeling something shift in my chest—not anger, not hurt, but understanding. For the first time in my life, I saw her. Not as my mother or thefragile woman I had spent a lifetime protecting, but as Gloria Wilder—the woman who spun lies into silk, who cried when it served her, who knew how to twist a knife without ever getting blood on her hands.
“You had an affair is a statement of fact, Mama. You deny it?”
She sniffled. “Silas…he forced me…and?—”
“Stop with the lies,” I cut her off, frustrated. “Just stop. You had an affair, and when Nash found out he didn’t ask you to leave,youwanted to leave.”
She wiped her tears. “I made a mistake. Haven’t you made mistakes?’
I arched an eyebrow. “What was the mistake? The affair or leaving Nash?”
“Now you’re just being mean.” She looked away and, like a movie heroine, fell on the couch’s armrest close to her and sobbed.
Christ!
“Mama,youleftNash, not the other way around. You took pills not because he asked for a divorce…not the first time; it was because he told you no way in hell would he let you take me away. Just give me the fuckin’ truth for once.”
She raised her head, and her wet eyes flashed anger. “I couldn’t lose you, Duke. You were all I had, and he was…I was distraught. I was so desperate. My life felt like it was over.”
For the first time, I wondered, what if she had died? Would life for me have been better? Would I already be with Elena, being happy instead of dying a little everyday? But no way Mama would’ve died. She’d have planned it so she would be saved.
“And the second time was because he asked for a divorce,” I continued.
“I couldn’t be a divorcee, Duke.”
“Why the hell not? You didn’t live with him, you saw other men…so why the hell couldn’t you be a divorcee?”
She licked her lips. “Your father would stop taking care of us.”
“Notus, Mama, justyou. He’d give you alimony, you knew?—”
“He said he’d give me twenty thousand dollars a month, that’s it!”
“That was on top of paying foreverythingelse,” I remarked. I was getting my head out of my ass finally and seeing things as they were. “But that wasn’t just it, was it, Mama? You didn’t want him happy.”
The mask fell. “How could he insult me like that? Marrying that…maid? What would people think?”
“But you were okay with him having Maria as a mistress?”
She shrugged. “Men like your father always have a side piece that wives ignore.”
“And how about your side pieces?”
She rolled her eyes. The mask had indeed fallen. “I wasverydiscreet.”
“Iknew.”
“Well…yes, but that’s because”—her face softened, and she put a hand on my shoulder—“we’re a team, and I have no secrets from you.”
I shrugged away from her touch and ran a hand over my face, feeling like the biggest fucking fool in the world.
“Mama, all we’ve had between us is secrets and lies and manipulation.”