Chapter 16

I snatched the rig back and slapped him across the face in the same motion.

Ethan cupped his cheek, eyes bulging.

"Josephine — you hit me!"

"You're the one who walked out. I was just going to teach you a lesson, and you hit me?"

"You haven't touched me in thirty years!"

His voice cracked with outrage.

He was right. From the day he was born I had never once raised a hand to him.

No matter what he'd done, I'd sat him down and talked it through.

I thought I was being the mother I'd wanted.

Instead I'd raised a boy who'd absorbed his father's arrogance and his biological mother's selfishness.

Everything I gave him, he assumed was owed.

He could treat me however he wanted. Because I was soft. Because I wouldn't leave.

He'd come to see me as the shadow behind him, cleaning up the messes he made.

So being hit was incomprehensible to him.

He'd forgotten — I wasn't his anymore.

I checked the rig. My voice stayed flat.

"You were about to smash a piece of equipment you couldn't replace with a full year of your paycheck. I didn't call the police. You should consider that generous."

It didn't calm him. It made him worse.

His face twisted. "It's just a camera. You sold the brownstone without permission. You started this. I am your son. Does a piece of camera equipment matter more than your own son?"

I almost laughed.

So now he was my son.

I knew everything. He knew I knew.

"Ethan," I said evenly, "you are not my son. We are not related by blood."

"The woman at your wedding — Vivienne — is your biological mother. You knew that already, didn't you?"

His face went bloodless.

"What — what are you talking about?"

"I'm — I'm your son. Mom, how can you say I'm not —"

He saw my face and stopped.

He knew.

His tone shifted to the one he used when he was trying to manipulate me.

"Even if we aren't blood, you raised me. You don't get to drop me that easily."

"You and Dad and Vivienne — you're all responsible for me. Because of your drama I lost my fiancée. Caroline still won't answer my texts."

He was complaining. About me. About his own collapse.

I almost laughed again.

"I was your unpaid everything for thirty years. You expect me to be that forever?"

"You already made your choice. You picked Vivienne. She's your biological mother."

"Caroline didn't leave you because of any of us. Caroline left you because she saw who you actually are."

"You and your father are cut from the same cloth. You blame everyone around you. In fact, you two are the ones who blew this family apart."

I looked at him with full, clear disgust. Turned. Walked.

He shouted after me, "You think we can't survive without you? We'll be better without you! Dad's condo will be done soon. You are not irreplaceable!"

None of it mattered.

The moment I'd sold that brownstone, I'd stopped having anything to do with the two of them.