Chapter 96 The Cruelest Confession

Chapter 96 The Cruelest Confession
Alex’s face twisted with revulsion. “You can’t imagine how sick and twisted that woman is,” he said. His voice cracked slightly. “I have no reason to call her mother anymore ir show any mercy. She wanted to prove to you that, in the end, she’s the one in control. That she’s the winner.”

Rainee’s heart stuttered in her chest. Her voice came out as a rasp. “How… how do you know all of this?”

Alex’s gaze dropped to the floor, his jaw tightening. “I went to see her once,” he admitted quietly, “when you were in a coma after the accident.”

The silence that followed was heavy, suffocating, like the eye of a storm before it rages again.

Flashback

" Oh, my lovely son is here."

Alex Fraser sat down like a man who had already been unmade. His face was a map of recent sorrow , tear tracks cutting clean paths through the grime, eyes swollen and rimmed with red. He looked every inch the ruin of a man who had been pulled through fire and left to catch his breath among the ruins. His hands trembled as he reached for the gun he had brought, fingers closing on cold metal until his knuckles paled. He leveled it at her as if the weight of the weapon might steady whatever had been broken inside him.

She settled into her chair with that same composed, disinterested air she always wore, and a nurse , or someone pretending to be respectful , presented a wicker basket overflowing with bright fruits and chocolates. The colors were almost obscene against the sterile chill of the room, apples like polished coins, pears with dew on their skin. She plucked one idly and bit into it, the casual motion of it mocking the storm that had dragged him here. Her eyes fell on the chocolates in a basket and she gave death glare to the lady officer standing behind her.

"Didn't they inform you that I'm allergic to peanuts? Why the hell do you bring me peanut chocolate? "

The officer immediately took those chocolate while apologizing again and again. Emma smiled in satisfaction as if she wanted Alex to witness her power even in prison. 

Alex’s voice came out small, hoarse with a hurt that had nothing to do with physical pain.

“Tell me it wasn’t you.”

The question shook him. Tears escaped again despite his effort to choke them back, they rolled down and left small, damp tracks. He hated himself for crying in front of her, for allowing any sign of weakness to exist where she could see it. She watched him as if she were studying an insect under glass , curious, amused, not in the least threatened.

“I never told them to kill her,” she said, so calm it was almost clinical. “I only ordered them to finish off her family. How is she, by the way? Is she alive? If you want, I can call a doctor from abroad. You must save her, Alex. For me. Okay?”

Her voice was sugar poured over poison. The words had no warmth, they were a transaction. Her eyes glittered with something far colder than grief or regret, a small, fierce obsession that made the fine hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Alex felt the ground slip under his feet in a way he hadn’t felt in years, for the first time in a long stretch of nights, the word fear moved through him like a live thing.

“Wh--why would you--” His question broke on the edge of bile and disbelief.

She laughed then, a brittle sound that bounced off the painted walls and made the attendants look away. It was laughter born of triumph, of cruel satisfaction.

“ Isn't it obvious?” she said, amusement twining through the sentence. “I want to see her face when I’ve won. The waiting is the sweetest part.” She set the fruit down with careful precision. “You should stay by her side. Tend to her properly… until I’m out.”

Alex hated how everything inside him wanted to obey that command, wanted to fold into the role she had carved out for him since childhood. He forced himself to breathe slowly, each inhale an act of will. The gun trembled in his hand as he tried to steady the chaos of his heart.

“How could you do this to your own son?” he demanded. “I just-- I just got married--”

At the name of the woman he’d promised himself to, Rainee, something like a live current ran through him, equal parts guilt and pain. He had wanted to build a life, to disentangle himself from his mother's long shadow. Now those dreams felt as fragile as the thin skin of the fruit in that basket.

She threw her head back and laughed again, as if his words were a private joke she had been waiting to hear. Her amusement ate at him like acid.

“Did I do this?” she said, wiping a corner of her mouth with a napkin as if she had only been enjoying the fruits in her own mension. No one can tell if she's in a prison or the prison is under her control “Ask your wife. She’s the one who ruined my life.” Her eyes narrowed with a petty, personal rage. “I wanted to kill her with my own hands, but that would be too simple. No, I prefer endless regret. I prefer her to wake up every morning and feel the weight of what she chose. I want her to remember and blame herself for standing against me. ”

A manic light flickered in her gaze and Alex felt his stomach drop. There was no motherly repentance there, only a cultivated cruelty that savored suffering like a delicacy.

“And, my dear son…” She leaned toward the glass, lowering her voice into a conspiratorial whisper that made the room seem smaller. “Would you like a little secret?”

He did not want it, and yet he could not look away. 

“I never had a son , I gave birth to a daughter,” she said. “But she could not be my heir. She would have ruined everything , the image, the alliances. So I wiped her existence from my plans. I picked up a handsome baby boy, you, from the hospital. My brother killed your entire family to ensure no one would ever find out, not even your father knows you’re not his blood.”

The room tilted. Sound receded to a high, buzzing hum. Alex’s first, grotesque reaction was not pain but a weird, disorienting relief, a small, filthy hope that the monstrous woman in front of him was not his mother after all. If she wasn’t, then perhaps some part of the shame, the obligation, the tangled web of loyalty she had demanded from him could be cut free.

That relief was quickly swamped by something else, a grief for the family he never knew, for the life stolen before it could begin. The idea of nameless people erased by her scheming lodged in his chest like a stone.

To be continued