Chapter 4 - THE HEALING OF TERESA
Three weeks passed before the house felt quiet again.
The security cameras had been recalibrated. Every single staff member who had turned a blind eye to my mother’s treatment had been fired and replaced with medical professionals vetted directly by my personal physician.
Teresa’s room had been moved to the sunlit eastern wing of the mansion, overlooking the sprawling rose garden she had always admired. Her new motorized wheelchair sat by the window, alongside her custom-carved oak cane, polished to a shine.
Every evening after finishing work at the corporate office, I came home early.
Not because I forgot a folder. Not because of an emergency. But because I refused to miss a single dinner with the woman who had scrubbed floors so I could sit in a university lecture hall.
On a warm Friday afternoon, I found her sitting on the back patio, a woolen blanket draped over her knees, watching Noah and Luke crawl across the pristine lawn while a gentle breeze rustled the maple trees.
I walked out carrying two cups of chamomile tea, setting one on the small wrought-iron table beside her.
“You’re home early again, Sebastian,” Mom said softly, not looking up from the twins. Her voice had regained some of its old warmth, though the faint scars along her wrists still remained as a grim reminder of what she had endured.
“I told you,” I said, pulling up a chair and sitting beside her. “My schedule belongs to my family now. No more late-night flights without you checked in right beside me or safely settled in the suite.”
She turned her head, her gray eyes meeting mine with a quiet, lingering sadness. “I was so afraid of losing them, Sebastian. Veronica said if I called your office, she would send the babies away to an adoption agency. She said you were too important to care about an old mother.”
“She lied,” I said firmly, taking her weathered, fragile hand in mine. “You are the foundation of everything I am. Without you, none of this”—I gestured broadly to the estate, the gardens, the peace—“would exist.”
Teresa squeezed my fingers, a small, genuine smile finally reaching her lips. “We don't need all this marble and gold, my boy. We just needed each other.”
“Maybe,” I smiled, kissing the back of her hand. “But from now on, you don't scrub floors. You don't hide in the basement. And if anyone ever tries to tell you what to do in this house again, they’ll have to get past me first.”
She chuckled, a light, musical sound that I hadn't heard in years.
Across the lawn, Noah let out a happy squeal and crawled straight into my lap, grabbing my tie with sticky fingers. Luke followed close behind, babbling happily as the afternoon sun cast a golden glow over the entire garden.
For the first time since I opened that bathroom door, the heavy knot in my chest finally dissolved.
May you like
The empire I built had nearly cost me my mother. But as I sat there with my sons laughing in my arms and Teresa smiling beside me, I knew one thing with absolute certainty:
No one would ever threaten our family again.
