PART 2: THE VELVET CURTAIN OF LIES
Victoria Mercer’s voice sliced through the thick, suffocating air of the shopping mall like a leather whip. I turned around, and the image that hit my eyes was the exact embodiment of the worst memories I had spent five years trying to erase. She was rushing toward us, her designer stiletto heels clicking sharply against the marble floor. Her face, tightly rejuvenated by a fortune's worth of plastic surgery, was now twisted in utter terror.
She didn't look at me. Her eyes were locked onto the two children holding my hands tightly.
"Mother? What are you doing here?" Damien turned, his face completely bewildered by his mother’s sudden, frantic appearance.
Victoria didn't answer her son. She froze in her tracks, her breath coming in ragged gasps. The pearl necklace—worth as much as a luxury apartment—seemed to tighten around her throat. Her aging yet razor-sharp eyes darted frantically between Ethan and Noah, finally locking onto the distinct ash-gray eyes of the Mercer lineage. The very eyes she thought she had paid to destroy before they could even blink five years ago.
"Let’s go, Damien. We have an important board meeting. Right now!" Victoria snapped, her voice trembling but still trying to maintain an aura of absolute authority. She stepped forward, reaching out to grab Damien’s arm to pull him away, the exact way she had micromanaged his life for thirty years.
"Mother, look at them..." Damien’s voice was hoarse. He brushed his mother’s hand off his arm—a rare act of defiance he had never dared to display before. "Look at these two boys. They... they are..."
"They are nobody!" Victoria interrupted, her volume rising so high that several passersby began to turn and stare. "It’s just a coincidence! The world is full of people who look alike! Come with me!"
I stood there, watching this pathetic melodrama of the high society, my heart growing cold. Ethan and Noah’s small hands squeezed mine even tighter; they were beginning to feel frightened by the angry, strange woman. My children's fear was my absolute limit.
"Don't scare my children," I spoke up, my voice not loud, but freezing everything in its radius. "And rest assured, Mrs. Mercer. I have no desire to recognize any acquaintances here."
I turned my back, intending to lead my boys straight to the exit. But Damien completely lost control. He lunged forward, blocking our path. The coffee cup had slipped from his hand, the dark liquid staining the floor like a grim blotch of the past.
"Mara, please! I beg of you!" Damien’s eyes were bloodshot, tears threatening to spill over. A man who always appeared on the covers of financial magazines with an impeccable, sophisticated look now resembled someone on the verge of complete spiritual bankruptcy. "I know I was a bastard. I know I have no right. But please... tell me the truth. Five years ago... that suicide note... that money... did you really..."
"A suicide note?" I froze. My mind went blank. "What on earth are you talking about, Damien?"
Five years ago, I left because he handed me an envelope of cash and a private abortion clinic’s business card. I left because of his cowardice. I had never written a suicide note, nor had I ever accepted a single dime to disappear, except for that humiliating cash he left on the table—which I threw straight into the trash can the moment I stepped out of the building.
The moment the words "what on earth" escaped my lips, Victoria’s face drained from panicked to a deathly, bloodless pale. She shoved her way between Damien and me, deliberately pushing her son backward.
"Mara Bennett! You signed a non-disclosure agreement! You accepted two million dollars from the Mercer family trust to terminate the pregnancy and leave the country! You legally certified that the child no longer existed!" Victoria roared.
But her words backfired completely. It wasn't a threat; it was a full, undeniable confession.
May you like
Damien stood paralyzed. He looked at his mother, then at me.
"Two million dollars? A non-disclosure agreement?" Damien muttered. Then, like a bolt of lightning ripping through a midnight sky, he understood. "Mother... what did you do?"
