TOBY
I pull the door open only seconds after the buzzer rings through my flat and meet the eyes of the woman standing on the other side of the door.
All the air rushes out of my lungs as she steps inside and I all but fall into her arms.
“Oh, Toby,” she says. Her voice is soft, but I hear the undercurrent of disappointment. “I knew that you’d find yourself on the losing end of all this eventually. What have you done, huh?”
Breathing in the familiar comforting scent of Mum’s perfume, I find some strength from deep down and lead her deeper into my flat.
“Where’s Galen?” I ask, not ready to dive into the heavy shit quite yet.
“With Stella. She said I should probably visit, and from the look of you, I see she was right.”
Lifting my hand, I scrub at the days of scruff covering my jaw.
“If I knew you were coming, I’d have—”
“Sit with me,” she says, lowering herself to the end of my sofa. “Talk to me.”
Falling into the corner seat, I prop my feet up on the cushion and lower my head into my hands.
“I’ve dreamed for years about what I could do to him for the way he treated you. Us. I’ve been crafting a plan for as long as I can remember, and him doing what he did with Stella, it only played into it.”
“You need to let it go,” she says quietly. “I understand your need for revenge. Trust me, I’ve thought up enough ways of my own to hurt that man for everything he did to my kids. But what’s the point? We’re all here, we’re together, safe. And he’s… yeah,” she mutters. I haven’t given her any information on where he is right now, and I can only assume that Galen hasn’t either. “I want us to put it in the past, where it belongs. We’ve got futures to look forward to, Toby. I don’t want you tormenting yourself over things you can’t change.”
“I finally hurt him, Mum,” I confess, pushing aside everything she just said. “I found his weakness and forced him to watch as I broke it right before his eyes.”
Mum gasps in shock, but when I finally lift my eyes to meet hers, thankfully I don’t see disappointment or hatred. Just understanding and concern.
She’s grown up in this world, just like my boys and I have. She’s seen plenty, heard even more. Experienced the worst of the monsters this life creates, so I doubt she’ll be shocked by anything I’ve actually done. More surprised I’m actually capable of it, I’m sure. To her, I’ll always be her little boy despite my training, despite my capabilities.
“Did you know about them?” I ask, testing to see how much Stella might have already spilled about what’s going on.
Her eyes narrow on me suspiciously. “About who?”
“His other family.”
“No,” she says, shaking her head, hatred for the man she was forced to spend her life with darkening her eyes. “I didn’t know they existed.” She quickly adds, “I knew he wasn’t faithful, but I never thought for a second he’d go to the effort of hiding an entire other life. A son.”
Gratitude for my sister slams into me as she says that. Stella and Seb could have easily told Mum about all of this, but they didn’t, even without me asking them to keep it to themselves.
“Joker wasn’t his only kid,” I confess.
“Oh?”
“J-Jodie,” I choke out.
“Tobias,” she warns, her eyes pleading with me not to say what she already knows is coming next.
“I was playing her to get to him.”
Her teeth grind as she glares at me. “Toby, what did you do?”
Pain rips through me as I think of her shattering on my bathroom floor, of her pained cries and her tears. Her vomiting, unable to stand what I’d done before she called me a monster, compared me to him, and walked out.
Slouching down into the sofa, I pray that it’ll just swallow me whole and make all of this go away.
“Everything she didn’t deserve. But equally, I forced him to witness everything he needed to see.”