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“You need to come home,” she said.
“This isn’t home.”
“Of course it is. You aremyson, so this has always been your home.”
I thought back to all the years I’d spent by myself, when she’d come to visit me in secret. I’d known she was my mother even if I’d had to keep it quiet.
Being a child who was forced to face his mother but pretend she was nothing more than an aunt—that was a weight no kid should have to carry.
“You’ve run this family fine. You don’t need me.”
“Of course I do. I don’t know how many years I have left, and I have to know that this family is left in good hands.”
“So find a successor, but it isn’t me. What about one of your daughters?”
“I have run this family in my husband’s name only because the men already knew me. Do you really think they’d accept a woman as the new head? Your sisters wouldn’t be able to hold it together.”
Sisters.
The two girls were younger than me, the results of her husband insisting on more kids no matter my mother’s feelings. I’d met them, of course, but I hardly considered them sisters.
Family was a foreign concept to me, something not tangible, something too elusive to understand. I’d never had it, so it meant little to me.
However, my mother didn’t agree, and she constantly attempted to turn us into some picture-perfect fantasy of family.
“There are women who run families,” I pointed out, my thoughts moving to Nemesis, the red-haired vixen who controlled most of the west coast.
And Nem’s sister.
She was nothing if not proof that women could be every bit as dangerous as their male counterparts.
“There are,” my mother agreed, “but they are rare. I have allowed you freedom to do as you want, to behave as you wish, to sow your oats and feel as though you had time to yourself. However, things need to change.”
“Why?”
“Because my health is failing, Lorien. I need to know that I leave things in good hands, that I can rest easy. That is why I’ve helped you with Mackenzie, because she is the steadying force you need to take over. With her by your side, you have the backing to take over.”
I pulled in a slow breath, then released it, using it to center myself. I knew well that the reason my mother hadn’t objected to mylittle obsession,as she liked to call it, was because of Kenz’s true parentage. With her by my side, even my history as second son would hardly matter. I could step into her position, and no one would raise a word against me.
I didn’t care for feeling as though others planned my life, however.
“You rarely take this long to complete anything,” she pressed. “Normally, anything you put your mind to is done in a matter of days, yet this drags on. We have spent so much money and yet you seem no closer to a resolution than you were at the start.”
“I am closer,” I argued, hating how it made me feel like a teenager whose mother scolded him. “However, if I simply take her, she will never truly relent. She’ll fight me, forever, and that would serve no one.”
“And you think you’ll win her like this? That you’ll eventually wear her down?”
“That’s how people are.”
She shook her head as though pitying me. “That may be men, but you know little about women. Women do not wear down. We remain quiet, we submit, but we do not forget or forgive.”
“If you don’t think I can win her over, then why allow me to do this at all?”
“Because her agreement or love isn’t needed—only her obedience. I married my husband because it was expected of me, because I needed to. It had nothing to do with what I wanted, with my feelings, and at least he had the decency to know that. He never believed or pretended as though I loved him. That honesty made for a strong union.”
I pressed my lips together, an unease creeping into me. Was she right? Was it possible that Kenz would never really accept me? I thought about the times I had seen my mother with her husband, when I’d come with my fake parents, with my mother’s sister, me posing as my mother’s nephew. They hadn’t smiled at each other, hadn’t seemed as though they cared for each other in the least.
It had turned my stomach, the game one that I never wished to play.
