Page 37 of Last Hand

“Please,” she whispers, “just… don’t let him suffer.”

I swallow hard. “I want him to suffer.”

Her eyes snap open.

“I want him to know what it’s like to be ripped apart from the inside out. I want him to choke on it.”

“Leone—”

“I can’t promise you a clean death, Mama. I also won’t lie to you.”

She stares at me for a long moment. Then her expression softens, not with forgiveness, it’s something sadder. Acceptance.

“You’re angry, I understand but…” she says.

I nod. “You think I enjoy this? You think this is easy for me?”

“No,” she says quietly. “And I know you’re not your father. Sometimes I wonder if I made you into him… just by how I treated you.” Her voice shakes.

“We don’t need to do this Ma,” I tell her.

“No, we do… I hated you for years. Not because you did anything wrong. Just because you existed. Because every time I looked at you, I saw what he did to me. I couldn’t separate you from him.”

She takes a breath, voice almost breaking.

“I tried to love you. I was so young, angry, and alone. I didn’t know how to love you without hurting you. And I was hurting too much to try harder.”

I look away. My throat tightens, and I force myself to speak.

“I know.”

“No, you don’t,” she snaps. “You don’t know what it’s like to carry a child you never asked for and be told to raise him in the arms of the man who broke you. I saw his face. And I let that blind me.”

She sighs shaking her head.

“I forgot that you were mine, too. That you had my blood. Were also part of me. And by the time I remembered that… you were already gone.”

Her voice breaks completely now, and I swallow back the emotion threatening to choke me.

“You were building walls I couldn’t climb. You stopped needing me. And I told myself that was fine… that it was better that way. But it wasn’t.”

I let out a breath I’ve been holding since I was a boy.

“It wasn’t,” I agree. “You weren’t there. You didn’t even try.”

“I was scared,” she says. “And I was selfish. I failed you.”

“No, your drinking failed me. Listening to you rant while drunk…”

“You didn’t make me an alcoholic, Leone. That choice was on me. I didn’t start drinking because of you if that is what you think. I started drinking because I realized how badly I failed you. Not because of you. And I know I don’t deserve a second chance.”

“You already have one.”

She blinks.

“Fallon is carrying your grandchild. And I’m not going to make the same mistakes. I won’t raise that child in bitterness. I won’t let them grow up wondering why their mother cries when she looks at them.”

Tears well in her eyes.

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