Chapter 12
Agatha reacted differently.
She called Julian weak.
That ended something between them.
I heard it through the open library door.
“You let Conrad turn you against your own mother.”
Julian answered quietly.
“No.”
She laughed.
“You think one afternoon makes you a monster?”
“No.”
Pause.
“I think six years in a kennel taught me what monsters call discipline.”
Silence.
I stayed outside.
That conversation did not belong to me.
Agatha eventually walked out and saw me.
Her face was pale.
“You’re pleased.”
“No.”
“You’ve taken my son.”
I almost laughed.
“He’s forty.”
“You poisoned him against me.”
“No.”
I looked at her.
“You gave him a memory he finally stopped defending.”
That hit.
She lifted her chin.
“I did what I had to.”
“For what?”
“To make him survive.”
There.
The root.
Agatha had married into Bellafonte at twenty-one.
Widowed at twenty-eight.
Raised Julian inside a family where weakness was noticed and exploited.
I knew pieces.
Not enough.
She continued.
“His father was soft.”
Julian’s father had died in an ambush.
Apparently softness had become her explanation.
“I promised my son would never be like him.”
“So you made him afraid of you.”
“I made him hard.”
“No.”
I stepped closer.
“You made him confuse fear with respect.”
She looked away.
For the first time, not dismissive.
Tired.
Maybe she knew.
Maybe not enough.
I said:
“You do not see Elliot again until he wants it.”
Her head snapped back.
“I’m family.”
“Yes.”
“That means something.”
“It does.”
I let the pause sit.
“It means your betrayal hurts more.”
She had no answer.
May you like
Blood gave access for years.
It did not guarantee access forever.
