Page 118 of Hidden

I found my mother in the kitchen exactly where I expected to. Sat at the small table by the window, her hands wrapped around a mug that had long since stopped steaming, she looked almost ghostly in the weak yellow light above the cooker. There was a fragility to her these days that frightened me more than I cared to admit. Not just physically, though, that too—she was thinner now, paler, her collarbones more prominent, the soft fullness in her face hollowing out with every passing week—but something deeper. As though part of her had simply stopped fighting after my father died. As though whatever had kept her going all these years had finally run dry.

She looked up when I entered, and for a second, I saw a flicker of something that used to be familiar. Then it was buriedbeneath that tired, brittle smile she wore now like a mask she no longer had the energy to hold in place.

“Couldn’t sleep?” she asked softly, and her voice sounded older than it used to.

I shook my head as I crossed the room and sat opposite her. “You?”

She gave a quiet little laugh that didn’t reach her eyes. “I think sleep and I stopped being friends a long time ago.”

That shouldn’t have hurt as much as it did. There was something about the way she said it—so matter of fact, so devoid of self-pity—that made it feel all the more unbearable. I looked down at the mug in her hands, at the way her fingers trembled ever so slightly around the ceramic, and I had to swallow around the tightness in my throat before I could trust myself to speak.

“You should try,” I murmured. “You need rest.”

“I need a lot of things,” she replied, glancing absently toward the dark window. “Rest isn’t top of the list.”

The words settled heavily between us, and for a moment neither of us said anything. There had once been a time when silence with my mother had felt easy, companionable, even. Now it often felt like walking across thin ice, both of us too careful not to step too hard in case everything beneath us cracked open.

Eventually, she exhaled slowly and said, “I don’t think I realised just how much your father held together until he was gone.”

I looked up at that, startled by the honesty in her voice. My mother had never been one to speak openly about the men around us—not my father, not my brother, not any of the politics or power or violence that shaped this world. She had survived by swallowing things whole and smiling through the choke of it. But tonight, something about her seemed… looser. Tired enough to tell the truth, perhaps.

“He wasn’t a good man,” she continued before I could say anything, and there was no emotion in the statement. “Not in the ways that mattered. Not where you were concerned. Not where I was concerned either, if I’m being honest.” Her fingers tightened around the mug. “Hell, he even failed Damien many times. He pushed him too hard, forced the presidency lifestyle on him. But there was so much he got right. So much I didn’t appreciate until it was taken away. There was order when he was here. There were lines people didn’t cross. There were things even the worst of them wouldn’t do, simply because they knew better than to test him.”

I stayed quiet, sensing instinctively that if I interrupted, she might close back up again.

“With Nico…” she trailed off and shook her head, her mouth tightening. “There are no lines anymore. No respect. No structure. He doesn’t lead this club. He infects it. And the men around him…” She looked down, then away. “They’re not loyal. They’re afraid. That’s not the same thing.”

The truth of that hit me hard enough to make my chest ache. Because I knew it. I lived it. I saw it every day in the way people moved around him, in the way laughter died when he entered a room, in the way everyone seemed to brace for impact before he even opened his mouth. Fear had become the language of this place, and it had poisoned everything.

“I hate what it’s become,” she whispered, and that, more than anything else, almost undid me. “I hate what happened to this club after your father died. I hate what happened to you.”

For a second, I just stared at her. My mother had never been cruel to me, but she had often been absent in the ways that mattered most. And yet now, hearing those words from her mouth, hearing even the faintest thread of regret in them, felt like someone had reached inside my chest and twisted.

“Mum…” I started softly, but she only shook her head and looked away.

“I should have done more,” she said. “A mother should do more.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I didn’t know if there even was anything to say. Because yes, maybe she should have. Maybe she should have fought harder, or shouted louder, or dragged me from this place years ago before it sank its claws into me for good. But I also knew what this world did to women. What it turned them into. What it demanded of them just to survive one more day. I knew she had been surviving too.

Before I could answer, voices sounded in the hallway outside.

Both of us went still instinctively, the fragile intimacy of the moment shattering beneath the weight of old habit. My mother’s eyes flicked to the door.

“…told you, it’ll be easy enough,” one of the men muttered, his voice just loud enough to carry through the wood.

Another voice answered, sharper this time. “Keep your fucking voice down.”

My pulse kicked instantly. Something about the tone, the tension beneath it, had every nerve in my body snapping to attention.

I should have stayed where I was. I knew that. I should have ignored it. Should have kept my head down and let men with too much power and too little conscience talk their shit outside the kitchen like they always did. But something in me had changed these past few days. Maybe it was Vienna. Maybe it was the fear. Maybe it was simply exhaustion. Whatever it was, I found myself pushing quietly back from the table and moving closer to the door before my better judgement could stop me.

“Gabriella,” my mother whispered sharply, but I shook my head once and pressed myself lightly to the wall beside the frame, holding my breath as the voices outside sharpened.

“…Devils won’t know what hit them.”

Everything inside me locked.

The Devils.