Page 51 of Crown of Steel

She’s standing behind him, wearing a colorful, expensivelooking dress with flowers on it. High, dark brown leather boots and a scarf that hangs loosely around her neck. Her hair is tied in a bun, but a honey-brown curl dangles next to her cheek. Where the twins look after their dad, I look like my mother, a curse my own Dad often spewed over me over the past years.

“Régis,chéri…” She gives me a careful smile. Her lips tremble a bit, as if that was difficult to say. Maybe it is. Dad never called me something sweet.

“Useless boy. Get in there.”

“Mother.” My spine turns rigid and her smile falters. Great, that took a full twenty seconds.

“Arthur,” Jean-Luc gestures toward an open door in the back of his office. “Let’s give Nathalie and Régis a moment. Care for a drink?” They walk away, casually chatting. And I’m still here.

“Mon fils.” My mother’s voice is soft, familiar, though I baulk at the memories.

Fais dodo, Colas mon p'tit frère Fais dodo, t'auras du lolo…

“Why are you here?” I can’t help but ask.

“I wanted to talk to you.” She gives me a sad, lost smile. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you ever since I finally got you inside your new home, far away from your father. They told me to wait, that you weren’t ready. But now that you’ve moved out here, and I’ve sort of lost you again, I need you…” Her throat clicks on a swallow. “I need you to understand,mon chéri. Will you please—I know you don’t reply to my messages, and I don’t mean to pry—” She cuts herself off, clearly looking troubled, “After all, I know what happened to you before, my son. But I want you to know about us, please. About everything that we once were, until we weren’t. About everything, I’d love for us to become once more.”

I blink. I can only stare at her, into those remarkable eyes, into the frown that reflects our mutual anxiety. Hers water, the moisture creating a shimmer in those green pools, turning theminto shiny emeralds. She must take my silence for an agreement, because she slowly continues.

“Before, a long time ago, your dad and I weren’t exactly a happy couple, though that might not surprise you. He had a bad temper, a foul mouth, and little patience. I—he—I wanted you so badly, Régis. But the pregnancy was a challenge and the actual delivery a nightmare. You were perfect, so sweet, my little angel. Such a sweet baby.” She sniffs and something clenches in my chest. “Still I—I wasn’t the same anymore. I was young, didn’t have a job, your father was the way he was…I got depressed, couldn’t see a way out. I couldn’t leave, because I had no support system, no family, no job, no money to take care of you. The doctor gave me medications, but they only made me feel more miserable. Useless. Life wasn’t at all what I’d imagined. And after another fight—” She shivers as a tear finally rolls over her cheek, “Something broke inside me. I—I couldn’t anymore. Forgive me, my love.”

My chest constricts violently at her words and despite myself, my hand reaches out, searching for hers. “You left me.” My throat locks around the lump formed in my throat.

Left me with him.

She jerks her head in rapid nods, sniffing as more tears roll down her face. “I know that, I know that,chéri. I didn’t think—Enfin, I left home, turned to live on the streets, feeling sick of being away from you. I watched you going to school, on the playground. I used to follow you around, not wanting to let go.” She chokes on a sob. “You were so precious. Such a sweet, little boy.”

Sorrow floods through my core like an ice-cold slither, and I lick my dry paper lips, unable to speak.

“Then one day, three days after you had turned nine, I met Jean-Luc. He was walking through the streets and asked me for directions. Just like that, as if I was a normal pedestrian and not a stinking, homeless person.” She shivers. “We talked a bit, thentalked some more. I fell in love with him, Régis. And he became my way out.”

“No—” Her words make me convulse. I was thrown away, replaced, just like that. Abandoned, just as I’d always feared. Fucking abandoned like some stray dog, not wanted anymore.

“I don’t want to hear this,” I croak.

“Please, my love. Let me explain. Please? Please, Régis.”

I breathe in, willing myself to calm down, and breathe out. We’re still barely standing inside the room, and I reach behind me, feeling the door.I can leave this place if I want to, a voice soothes. It’s a choice, not a trick.

Not a trick.

I nod weakly.

“Thank you,” she breathes, then continues, “Jean-Luc and I dated for two years before I met the twins. Those were happy times, the boys sweet, but still—” Her face contorts as if she didn’t mean to share that hurtful, stinging piece of information. “I never lived with them, Régis, I couldn’t—not knowing that my own son lived in Nîmes without me. There were times that I believed that I was given a second chance. That you were happy and that things were better like this. That I should stay away from you instead of standing on your doorstep one desperate day. Perhaps you had forgotten about me. I…” She takes in a deep breath and her gaze stutters before it dips. “With time, I started to believe that. It was better this way. You were happy without me, and the old me had somehow exchanged my boy for a better life. Was given two in exchange.” She chokes on those final words, and a grieving wail explodes from her mouth. She shakes her head, eyes leaking with tears. “But I missed you so much, Régis. Mychild. It started to eat at me from the inside, the feeling of loss becoming bigger and heavier, and I started to doubt my earlier decisions. What if you wanted to be found? What if we were meant to be together, despite my horrible mistakes? Apprehension sucked me in and I couldn’t take itanymore.” A tentative, fragile smile flares onto her lips. “When Jean-Luc asked me to marry him, I knew that was my call. I was tired of living with my self-inflicted reality. Part of me wanted him to prove me right. That you wouldn’t want anything to do with me. That you were, effectively, the child I had lost. But he didn’t. He actually wanted to know about you. He…gave us that second chance.”

“You mean getting me out of the slums like some charity case?” My chest expands from the built-up pressure. Inside, anger and sorrow squeeze tight against each other, snarling and growling as they battle for dominance. “I bet that looked good on your social profile, despite the fact that you were, what… ten years too late?”

My mother lets out another sob while her hand squeezes mine. “Please,chéri. I know we were too late at starting to look into your background. You were already seventeen, nearly an adult, and I’d been gone for over ten years.” She closes her lips tightly, rolling them as her throat constricts with guttural sobs. “Nearly an adult. But you…we started looking into your background. Through Jean-Luc’s connections we got hold of your school reports and your medical visits. That’s how I found out that you were seen by a psychologist…” She pauses, and when she speaks again, her voice is low with withheld emotion, on the verge of a breakdown. “Everything changed for me that day. There are no words to describe how sorry I am for taking so long to get you out of there, my love. I have wondered many, many times why it took me thirteen years to get you back. Wondered many times that if I’d stayed, with your dad, with you, life would have ultimately been better for us. My ulterior motive that you were better off without me tarnished when we found out the truth, and bitter resentment for my own lack of actions filled my cup of regret instead. I had left you there. Withhim.” Another guttural choke leaves her rattling chest and she raises a hand to cup her cheek and rub the wrinkles ofrepentance away. “The more information about you we dug up, the more I needed to be triple sure that we’d be successful. That your father wouldn’t have any secret weapons in court. You were suffering so much. Jean-Luc assured me that with his contacts, we’d have nothing to fear. But I did. I feared every single second after our lawyer sent out that first letter to convict your father.” She pauses, lost in her own thoughts for a moment, before she continues, “I hated myself. And I wouldn’t risk losing you in that process. After we'd had all the risks covered, we went in hard and fast.”

They had. And in their wake, they had burned everything to the ground.

Fisting my hands, I snort at the thought. “I never asked you to regret leaving me, nor to come and get me. I was nearly eighteen, I could have left him by myself.”

Mom shakes her head tragically. “But you and I both know that you would have never left him. You would have stayed, and he would have continued his abuse. After his formal arrest, when the police cleared the home you shared with your father and you’d already been taken to live with us in the villa, they sent me the photos of your room. That’s when I found out about that cage, Régis…” She puts both her hands in front of her mouth as she lets out another deep sob. My heart freezes, humiliation combined with fear making my spine rigid with something fierce.

“I wasn’t sure, but did he make you—”

“Yeah,” I rasp, cutting her off. I can’t hear her say those words out loud. Can’t bear the memory.

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