Page 166 of Hades

The words sliced through him again. I felt Brock’s body coil behind me, but this time Rykard moved first. He didn’t touch her. Didn’t need to. He stepped close enough that Mother stopped breathing.

“He was fourteen,” Rykard said, his voice low enough that it scared me more than yelling would have. “A kid. You stole a little girl from her family and let us spend our whole fucking lives believing we’d failed her.”

Mother’s eyes flashed. “I saved her.”

My stomach turned. Rykard stared at her. Apollo stopped moving entirely. Brock’s arm tightened around me.

“You saved her?” I asked. My voice sounded wrong. Small, thin, like it belonged to someone else.

Mother looked at me, and for one terrible second, hope lit her face. She thought I’d given her an opening. She thought I was reaching for the story she wanted to tell.

“Yes,” she said softly. “Yes, sweetheart. I saved you. You were meant to be mine.”

Rykard made a sound that wasn’t human. I couldn’t look at him. If I looked at him, I’d break in a way Brock might not be able to hold together.

“I was meant to be yours?” I repeated.

Mother’s eyes filled with tears. “You don’t understand. I had nothing. No child. No husband who loved me the way he should have. No life that mattered. Your mother had everything.”

My mother.

Not her.

The other woman.

The one who’d lost me.

The one who’d died without knowing I was alive. Something collapsed inside me so quietly no one else heard it.

“You mean my real mother,” I said.

Mother’s face hardened. “Don’t call her that.”

The last thread snapped. I didn’t move. Didn’t scream. Didn’t lunge or cry or do anything dramatic enough to match the violence inside me. I only stared at the woman who’d raised me and realized I didn’t know where love ended and theft began. Maybe, with her, there had never been a difference.

A familiar voice cut softly through the chaos. “Carol?”

Zander.

I’d forgotten he was there. He stood a few feet behind Mother, not pushing forward, not inserting himself, not demanding answers. Just watching. His face held concern, but his eyes were too still. They moved from Mother to me, then to Brock’s arm locked around my waist, then to the Gods forming a wall around the booth.

Mother turned toward him like a drowning woman seeing shore. “Zander,” she breathed. The softness was instant. So was my pain. Even now, with everything falling apart, she still had softness for him.

He stepped closer, careful and calm. “What’s happening?”

“Lies,” Mother said immediately. “Cruel lies. They’re trying to take Violet from me.”

Brock’s chest rumbled against my back. “Careful.”

Mother ignored him and moved toward Zander, putting him between herself and the men who knew too much. “The club hates me. They’ve always hated me. They love her now, all of them, because she’s useful and pretty and sweet. Hades especially. He thinks she belongs to him, and she lets him.”

My cheeks burned. Brock went dangerously still. Zander’s gaze flicked to me again. Something shifted in his expression. Not much. Enough.

Mother kept talking, her voice low but not low enough. Maybe she didn’t care who heard anymore. Maybe she just needed someone to hear her version first. But she wasn’t making sense. The club didn’t hate her; the club didn’t even know her.

“She neglects me now. She forgets what I gave up. She leaves me alone in that house while she runs after him and his club. She used to care. She used to know I needed her.”

The words landed in strange places. Not because I believed them. Because I used to. I used to measure my worth by how quickly I answered when she called. By whether her tea was hot enough. By whether her pillows were arranged just right. By whether I could sense a mood before it became punishment. I had built my whole life around not being accused of neglect. And now she said it in front of strangers like it was the truth.