Page 120 of Thorns of Desire
“So you didn’t really like my father? Or… my husband.”
She shrugged. “I didn’t like that they discarded me,” she said, the first note of sincerity in her voice. “Everyone always discards me. I’m never important enough, but my sister was.”
It was then that I realized my mother’s wounds were deeper than anyone could have ever fathomed, but she’d done most of the digging.
“I didn’t,” I pointed out.
She blinked, two heartbeats passing before she answered, “But you did,yavrum.When you picked him over me.” A shuddering breath left me, my mother’s insecurity staring back at me for the first time. Or maybe it was there all along and I was too blind to see it. “He… they…” She tilted her chin at my husband, brother, and uncle. “They will leave you. That’s what people in this world do. They always leave when it suits them.”
“You’re wrong,” I said in a low voice. It’d be a lie to say that the thought of losing my newfound family and friends didn’t scare me, but my friends had been with me through thick and thin. My brother and uncle had been watching over me for years. That had to count for something and prove that they would stick by me. And that alone gave me a small relief.
She let out a breath of disbelief, interrupted by a coughing fit. “Time will prove me right.”
“What about Mei Long?” Danil chimed in, cutting through my mother’s attempt to plant seeds into my mind and soul. “What about her mother who was beheaded because she fell in love with you?”
“Li, the wife of the head of the Triads, was unhappy. I was unhappy. We hated this world, yet leaving it and starting over alone was… hard. But together, we were brave. I was helping her with her newborn, and we made a plan. We had so much in common even before I learned of my pregnancy. She fell in love, and slowly so did I, but I couldn’t admit to it. Not to her, not to myself. Nonetheless, we were close and wanted out, so we planned our escape. Everyone assumed I set Atticus’s house on fire out of jealousy, but it was to set our plan in motion.”
“What was the plan?” my uncle asked.
“Get you, Lykos Costello, to cast me out,” she answered weakly. Her strength was leaving her.
“And how would you have known that I’d kick you out?”
She laughed weakly. “I knew once you learned what I did for Atticus, you would have no choice. So, I made sure you found out. I went to Atticus’s home where Li was waiting for me with baby Mei. She broke down. She couldn’t leave her son behind, so she begged me to keep her baby while she got her son, and she promised to meet me. I pleaded with her not to go, but she was determined. Before she left, she asked me whether I loved her. She wanted to hear those words and I wouldn’t—couldn’t—give them to her. I feared if I did, it would end just as it did the last time. With another death of the woman I loved on my hands.”
I was so fucking blind. Yes, I hadn’t spent a lot of time with my mother since my boarding school days, but it seemed inconceivable that I had never seen it before. I didn’t know my mother at all.
“So you never told her?”
“I knew in my bones it wouldn’t end well, but I agreed to her plan. I took the baby and the money and I set the house on fire. Li went back to her husband to steal her son, and we were planning on meeting in New York.”
I swallowed. “But she never made it.”
This story didn’t excuse her behavior or betrayal, but she had done what she thought she needed to in order to survive. It was her family and the circumstances that drove her to it.
“She didn’t.” Her eyes turned misty. “We would have been so happy. The two of us and the two girls who we would have raised as sisters. If only Li didn’t insist on bringing her son…”
It was wrong on so many levels that she would have wanted the woman she loved to leave her son behind.
“Did it ever occur to you if you told me, I would have helped you?” My uncle sounded slightly bitter. Maybe he couldhave altered the course of her life—my life—and given her the happily-ever-after that she’d always dreamt of.
“Li haunts me every day,” she admitted after a long stretch of silence. “She died, and I desperately needed to confess that it wasn’t one-sided. That I felt it too. Existing without her was torture.” My eyes burned because I knew there was no saving her. She had been battling her own demons for so long that she’d become one with them. “But you, Athena, and Mei kept me going. The promise I made to Li that I would ensure her daughter was happy.”
“Is she?” I asked, finally understanding why my mother would randomly disappear during my childhood. She was visiting Mei Long, a sister that was never meant to be.
She nodded. “She is, and she’s not part of the mafia world. It’s what I wanted for both of you.”
“How did you convince the Windsor family to allow you to be part of her life?” Danil questioned. “They aren’t exactly known for letting outsiders into their family circle.”
She shrugged. “It was the clause of the adoption agreement. I got to visit Mei as her aunt so I could build a relationship with her. They thought she was my daughter, and since they were desperate for a baby girl, they agreed.”
“Jesus, Mom, why didn’t you just keep her? It could have been the three of us together.”
She cupped my cheeks, staring at me with a sad smile. “For the same reason I had to keep you away from me and send you to boarding school. It wasn’t safe. The Triads would have found her if she’d stayed with me. They didn’t know about my pregnancy, so you were safe. At least for a little bit.”
“So many secrets and lies,” I murmured, disheartened. Manuel’s hand came to rest on the small of my back in comfort, being my rock once again. It was so easy to succumb to all the secrets, but instead, I chose to surrender to his protectionand love. “Weren’t you worried they’d catch up to you? Hurt everyone around me? Or your grandchild?”
I forgave her betrayal to me, but I struggled to forgive her betrayal to my baby. Her decision to hand me over to the Triads could have resulted in my baby’s death.
