Page 106 of A Kingpin's Weakness
She finally looked up, eyes red, voice barely steady. “You met your father. You just didn’t know.”
I blinked hard, confusion and pain mixing. “When? Why didn’t you tell me?” My heart pounded so loud I thought it might burst.
“The day we took Noah home from the hospital.”
My mind went straight to that man him. The way he called her Jolene like he had some damn claim on her. The coldness in her eyes when she saw him. The way he looked at me, like I was a puzzle piece he never got to fit.
“Why didn’t you tell me?!” I almost screamed, standing up, rage fueling me. “You’re so fucking selfish, Jo! You always put yourself first. What about me? What about my life?”
Her voice cracked, almost a whisper, but it hit me harder than any slap. “He raped me, Stormi.”
The words slammed into me like a freight train. I felt my knees weaken. All the anger, confusion, pain flooding in, raw and jagged. I didn’t know whether to hate him or pity her. I didn’t know if I wanted to scream or just break down.
I stared at her, tears blurring my vision. “You should’ve told me. I deserved that much.”
She reached out, voice trembling, “I was scared. I didn’t want you to see me like that… Like... Broken.”
And just like that, all the walls I built around my anger cracked, leaving only the ache of a daughter wanting her mother to be real, flawed, and there.
“He was Sweetie’s boyfriend.”
I stopped in my tracks, eyes wide, heart pounding. “Jo, what?” I asked, moving closer, kneeling beside her. Her hands trembled in her lap, voice barely above a whisper.
“I used to think the drugs helped me escape reality,” she said, voice cracking. “But that day… that day I saw him in the hospital? The drugs didn’t save me. Didn’t save me at all.”
She swallowed hard, blinking back tears. “I’m 46 now, but the moment that man said ‘Jolene,’ I turned back into that scared fourteen-year-old girl.”
I reached out but didn’t touch her, not yet. Her pain was raw, alive.
“Six months… six months he and Sweetie were dating before he came into my room and touched me.”
Her voice broke. “I thought he was the cool stepdad.., the one who’d let me sneak his liquor, finish his joints. I didn’t know... I didn’t know what he really was.”
Tears spilled from her eyes, and my chest tightened with a fierce ache. This wasn’t just Jo telling me a story it was her finally sharing the truth she’d carried alone for years.
I could tell in Jo’s eyes she was thinking about the first night her innocence was taking away from her.
“One night,” Jo’s voice shook as she spoke, “he agreed to watch me while Sweetie and her friends went out. The whole night, he let me drink and smoke. We watched scary movies, and I thought… maybe it was okay.”
She swallowed hard, eyes full of pain. “When I got up to go to bed, he said he’d help me.”
My chest tightened.
“Leon walked me into my room, laid me down, and started to take off my clothes. Like I wasn’t his teenage step daughter but some grown woman he had met in some night club.”
Jo stopped, trembling. “I told him no. I knew it was wrong.”
Her voice cracked. “Just like all the times before when he ‘accidentally’ brushed up against me, or ‘accidentally’ walked in while I was in the bathroom. None of it was an accident.”
She looked me in the eyes, haunted. “That night, he forced himself on me. Didn’t care how much I begged, bled, or cried.”
Jo laughed, but it was broken and bitter, tears spilling over. “The next morning, the moment I saw Sweetie, I told her what happened.”
I held my breath.
“She blamed me,” Jo said, voice raw. “Said I was lying, trying to ruin her relationship. And him… He just stood there and let her scream at me, call me names.”
Her hand reached up, trembling, and touched my cheek like I was the only safe thing left. “That day, I needed my mother. I needed someone to stand up for me.”
