Page 93 of One of Those Amnesia Stories

She gave a sharp scoff, her mouth twisting with disbelief. “So your wife decides to play the martyr, and I’m the villain?”

“Yes.” The answer came out low and razor-sharp. “You are to blame. She offered to help me, and you saw a weakness to take advantage of. You’re a…” My eyes searched her, and I remembered the way her compliments were always laced with poison, designed to make me question my own worth. “You’re a cockroach,” I finally said. “Wait, no.” I shook my head, the analogy crystallizing. “You can get rid of a cockroach. You’re a lizard. Slippery. Tenacious. Alessia didn’t know how to get rid of a lizard permanently, so she did the next best thing. She stood as a shield between you and me so you wouldn’t crawl out of the cracks to get to me.”

Her face twisted into something truly ugly, all pretense of sophistication gone. “Don’t you dare speak to me like that, Cassian. I am your mother—”

“You’re not.”

The words cut through the air, sharp and final. For the first time in my life, I had dared to say it.

She froze, utterly shocked.

Because I had never said it before.

She was the one who had always wielded those words. She turned them into weapons, dragging out my debt whenever it suited her, then waking up the next day and slipping effortlessly back into the role of the loving mother.

Even as a child, I sensed something was wrong. There was a chill in the way she treated me, a strain behind every smile she gave me. I convinced myself it was normal. Maybe that was simply what mothers were supposed to be.

The facade finally shattered when my father abandoned us, fleeing with his mistress. Consumed by grief and fury, my mother unleashed the truth she had guarded for so long.

I wasn’t her son.

I was the living, breathing proof of my father’s betrayal. The result of one night with a woman whose name he never bothered to remember.

But she still took me in. Still pretended, for the world’s sake, that I was hers. Pretended for my sake that she was my mother.

When my father left, she shattered, and in the wreckage, she let the truth pour out. She screamed about how she had forgiven him for his one-night indiscretion, for allowing his bastard to live under her roof, only for him to betray her again and abandon her completely.

She told me my face disgusted her.

That every day she had to pretend to love me felt like a betrayal of herself.

That she couldn’t stand the sight of me.

Finally, her coldness made sense. The puzzle of my childhood snapped into a clear, ugly picture.

I was certain she would throw me out. With my father gone, I was no longer her cross to bear. She was finally free of the living reminder of his infidelity.

I was sure that was the last day I would ever see her.

But the next morning, when I crept downstairs, already dreading what awaited me, she was there.

Smiling.

She had made my “favorite” food, setting the plate in front of me with the same care she always used when she wanted to play the loving mother. Then she apologized for the night before, her tone soft and tender, as if nothing terrible had happened. She told me how much she loved me.

At that moment, I made a silent vow. I would owe this woman for the rest of my life. She had endured so much, carried the burden of my existence alongside her own pain, yet she had never discarded me.

My own blood had. But she didn’t.

So I stayed.

I endured her bad days. I absorbed every drop of venom when my face became a trigger, a living reminder of the betrayal she could never escape. I weathered every storm she unleashed, every cruel word that made me wonder whether I had any right to exist at all.

She faltered, seeing the resolve in my eyes. “Cassian—” she began, scrambling to summon that practiced warmth again. “Don’t be ridiculous. I am your mother. You know that. You know how much I love you—”

“You don’t,” I said quietly.

Her eyes widened. “What?”