For the first time, Abigail’s voice lightened, joy momentarily breaking through her sorrow as she spoke of her pregnancy. ‘At first, I thought it was just exhaustion. Ariana worked me to the bone, pushing harder every day despite how sick I felt. Then one day, I collapsed. My mother was the only one who cared enough to take me to the hospital. That’s when I learnt… I was pregnant.’”Her expression shifted between fleeting joy and deep sorrow. “For a moment, I was happy—overwhelmed, even. A baby is supposed to be a blessing, isn’t it? But then reality struck. Ariana would never let me carry a baby in that house. And if they learnt the truth about my own paternity and that you were also Alex’s heir, it would kill me before I even gave birth to you. Also At the time, the Consortium was locked in a brutal war with a rival syndicate. Their primary target was Melody’s son, and if word got out that another heir was on the way, they would have killed me—assuming Ariana didn’t get to me first.

“I tried to tell Sebastian,” Abigail whispered, her voice cracking under the weight of years of buried pain. Tears welled in her eyes, unstoppable now. “I even gathered enough courage to tell Michael, but they both dismissed me like I was insane. Worse, they accused me of trying to seduce Adam and claimed I was lying about him wanting to kill us.”“How could they not believe you?” Jason’s voice rose, trembling with barely restrained fury.“I asked myself the same question, over and over, until the answer became painfully clear: I was nothing in that house. My words, my thoughts, my very existence—they didn’t matter. The only thing they cared about was you.”“Me?” Jason scoffed, disbelief cutting through his tone.“I know they were harsh on you, dear, but the truth is you were their blood and an heir when it came down to it. I guess I shouldn’t say they cared about you, but they did see you as valuable because you were the heir. I, however, was useless to them, and I confirmed it when

Abigail braced herself for Jason’s rejection, for him to deny her as his mother and hate her.Jason waited for the sting of hatred to surface.And it did.But not for her. For Alex, Ariana, Sebastian, Michael, Adam, and even a little for himself. For thinking his mother abandoned him because she didn’t love him.lBut not a shred of hatred was directed at the woman sitting before him—a woman who had endured unimaginable pain just to protect him.How could he hate her?Although he could recognise that her maternal instinct was misguided, he couldn’t hate her for that.“You don’t have to ask,” Jason said softly, breaking the silence.“What?” Abigail whispered, her voice trembling.“You don’t have to ask to be my mother. You already are. And I don’t hate you. I… I love you, Mom.” The words felt foreign yet liberating, mending a wound Jason hadn’t realised was still open.“I love you too, my son,” Abigail said, her face lighting up with pure joy before she threw herself into Jason’s arms.

Dario leaned back in his chair, studying the man in front of him. “Thank you, Miles. You’ll be rewarded for this information.”Miles gave a curt nod before leaving the room, closing the door quietly behind him.Jason and Dario exchanged a glance before standing. As they left the building and climbed into Dario’s car, silence lingered between them for a moment before Dario finally broke it.“So, what do we do now? I’m assuming you have plans of taking Connor down.” Dario asked, keeping his eyes on the road as he started the car.Jason let out a long breath, staring out the window. “I’ll let you know the plan tomorrow.”“Fuck that.” Dario’s tone was sharp, unyielding. “I want to be part of the planning process.”Jason turned his head sharply toward Dario. “Dario, this is a personal issue, okay? He ruined my mom’s life. And now he wants to do the same to me.”Dario glanced at him briefly, his expression unreadable. Jason sighed and ran a hand through his hair.“I just don’t know how I tr

If revenge and making people pay for what they'd done had taught Jason one thing, it had taught him he could be scarily efficient.In the two days leading up to the wedding, he'd gotten the detailed DNA results for Serena’s baby, gone to the police to report Connor so they could work together on his arrest, and still managed to plan the wedding with Serena, although every time he was with her, he had to resist the huge urge to call her out for being a liar and a manipulator and working with the most wretched man Jason knew. It wasn’t easy to hold all of that in, but he managed it.He’d made sure that he was in charge of sending out invites so that he wouldn’t actually send out any. Whatever was about to take place in this hall was far from a happy wedding ceremony that guests could dote over.But the thing he was most proud of was convincing his mother to put her fear aside and watch Connor get arrested. It was a big step for her to truly get over her fear. She was waiting somewhere i