Chapter 15
Colette's breath hitched as she answered her phone during a rare moment of respite from her new job. The voice on the other end was familiar, but filled with a concern that pierced through her fragile state.
“Colette, is something wrong with the phone at your house?” Mrs. Angelis's voice was tinged with a worry that seemed both distant and close. “I rang and rang and rang all day yesterday and nobody picked up. Are you and Matt out somewhere?”
Colette’s heart sank. Matt hadn't mentioned their separation to his family. She struggled to compose herself, her mind racing to find a balance between truth and discretion. “No, we are in Sydney…” she began hesitantly, her voice betraying her anxiety. She wasn’t sure how much to reveal, fearing Matt’s reaction if she said too much.
Mrs. Angelis's voice brightened with a hint of relief. “Great then. You and Matt will come for Danny’s birthday, won’t you?” Danny was Matt’s half-brother, a reminder of the family Matt had fought so hard to keep together.
Colette swallowed hard. She had heard pieces of Matt's past, but the gravity of it struck her afresh with Mrs. Angelis's casual mention. The story was one of heartache and resilience, a history she could now see written in the lines of Matt’s face.
Matt’s mother, Mrs. Angelis, had faced unimaginable hardships after her husband’s death. With four children to care for, she had worked tirelessly, juggling three jobs at a time. The exhaustion had been relentless, the weight of responsibility crushing.
One fateful day, as she labored in a fast food joint, tragedy struck. Her youngest child, just eleven, had fallen down the stairs of their cramped apartment, hitting his head before collapsing on the floor. The emergency call that followed was a harbinger of the night that would shatter her world.
Mrs. Angelis had been summoned to the hospital, her heart breaking as child services arrived to assess the living conditions of her family. They were living in a two-bedroom flat, barely making ends meet. The child, though injured, would recover from his concussion, but the stress of the night proved too much for Mrs. Angelis.
In the sterile, harsh light of the hospital, the strain reached its breaking point. Overwhelmed and on the edge, Mrs. Angelis had collapsed on the cold hospital floor, her body succumbing to a seizure. It was a moment of profound despair, a silent scream of a woman who had given everything and now had nothing left.
Child services had taken the four children for the night, and for the week that followed, as Mrs. Angelis recuperated. They were reassured that their mother would return. But as days turned into a week, and then months hope faded. Mrs. Angelis never came back. In a move that would haunt her for the rest of her life, she surrendered her children to foster care and returned to their apartment alone, unable to face the pain and guilt.
Matt, seventeen at the time, watched in anguished silence as his siblings were taken from him. The family he had known and loved was torn apart by the very woman who had once been their pillar of strength. The betrayal cut deep, a wound that never fully healed.
Months later, as he turned eighteen, Matt fought tooth and nail to regain custody of his siblings. With nothing but a mechanic’s job to his name, he stood before the court and, against all odds, won the right to raise his brothers and sister. His determination and love saw him through, and he became the father figure they needed.
When Mrs. Angelis tried to reconnect, Matt’s anger was a wall she couldn’t breach. He refused to let her see her children, the hurt too fresh, the scars too deep. Though his siblings slowly made peace with their mother, Matt remained steadfast in his refusal to forgive. The pain of abandonment had become a part of his identity, a bitter reminder of the family he had fought to keep together.
Years had sculpted Matt into the formidable billionaire he was today. His rise from the shadows of a broken childhood to the towering figure of financial success was a testament to his unyielding willpower. The vast fortune he had amassed, built on a mountain of sacrifices and a massive loan, stood as an ironclad fortress—yet it could not shield him from the scars of his past.
Mrs. Angelis, after years of hardship, had found solace in a new chapter of her life. She had met Roger, fallen in love once more, and given birth to Danny. It was a fragile hope for redemption, a second chance that was both a blessing and a curse. When Danny was born, Matt’s siblings had insisted he attend the wedding. Reluctantly, he had agreed, and once or twice he had seen Danny. But the veneer of tolerance was thin; beneath it lay a deep, unrelenting resentment.
Colette had witnessed Matt’s strained interactions with his mother. She knew all too well that Matt’s forgiveness was a mirage—a facade constructed for the sake of his siblings. The raw wound of abandonment still festered beneath the surface, untouched by the passage of time or the superficial civility of their meetings. Matt's heart, once brimming with the possibility of reconciliation, had hardened into a bitter testament of what had been lost.
Mrs. Angelis’s voice trembled over the phone, a fragile thread of hope reaching out across the miles. “You both will come, won’t you, Colette?” The vulnerability in her tone was a sharp, cutting reminder of a mother's longing for redemption.
Colette’s heart ached with a deep, consuming sadness. She understood the weight of Mrs. Angelis’s plea—a desperate attempt to bridge the chasm between a mother and a son she had once abandoned. The pain of that fractured trust was palpable, a relentless shadow that clung to every interaction.
Love and trust, intertwined like threads in a tapestry, had been irrevocably torn apart. For Matt, the betrayal of his mother was not a wound that time had healed; it was an open, festering scar that no amount of success or forgiveness could cover. The trust he had once given so freely was gone, and with it, any possibility of true reconciliation.
“I will talk to Matt and let you know Mrs. Angelis.” The other woman had sighed and Colette had felt like sighing too. Because Matt was now just as out of her reach as he was out of his mother’s.