After embracing them, he guided them gently to sit, his voice dropping to something soft and deliberate. "Kids… from now on, don't call Giada 'Aunt' anymore."
He paused just long enough to make the moment land.
"Call her 'Mom.'"
The twins' eyes lit up instantly, like they had just been given the best news in the world. They turned to Giada, their faces glowing with excitement, and shouted in perfect unison:
"Mom!"
"Mom!"
My heart dropped.
"Mom…" I repeated under my breath, the word barely leaving my lips.
Hearing the children I had raised, the children I had loved, protected, devoted my entire life to, call another woman "Mom"…
It felt like being crushed. Completely.
I was the one who packed their lunches every morning. I was the one who stayed up through endless nights when they were sick. I was the one who held their hands through heartbreak, who sat through every school event, who kissed every scraped knee and soothed every tear.
And now.
Giada smiled radiantly, reaching out to smooth their hair, cupping their cheeks with a tenderness that felt like theft. "My kids," she said sweetly. "Now I don't have to sneak around like some criminal just to see you anymore."
My mother couldn't take it anymore.
Her voice broke as she shouted, raw and desperate. "Tessa! Adrian! Your mother is right here!"
She pointed straight at me, her eyes blazing with disbelief and pain. The crucifix pendant at her neck was white-knuckled in her other fist, the chain biting into her skin.
"She gave up eighteen years of her life to raise you!" she cried. "And now you're calling the woman who destroyed our Family 'Mom'? Have you lost all sense of right and wrong?!"
"Adrian," my mother said, her voice trembling so badly it sounded like it might shatter, "you were a sickly baby. Do you remember that? Of course you don't. You were always burning up with fevers, always crying through the night. There was one night, one night your temperature spiked to 104. It was pouring rain, a storm so bad no one dared step outside. And your mom," her voice cracked as she pointed at me, "she didn't hesitate. She wrapped you up, ran out into that storm, and carried you through the rain just to get you to the Family doctor. She didn't even think about herself."
Her words hung in the air before she turned, eyes red and swollen, toward Tessa.
"And you," she continued, her tone breaking between anger and heartbreak, "when you started at that prep school, you got mixed up with the wrong crowd. Those kids weren't your friends. They were dangerous. Sons and daughters of people who would have loved nothing more than to hurt a Valente. That night, they drugged your drink. You didn't even know what was happening to you." Her voice rose, trembling with the memory. "If your mom hadn't burst in at just the right moment, with help, God knows what they would've done to you."
She paused, her breath uneven, her hands shaking.
"She fought them off," my mother said hoarsely. "She protected you. She took ten knife wounds for you. Ten. Do you understand that? If it weren't for her, your life would've been ruined that night."
The room was completely silent now. Every single person listening. The bodyguards along the walls had gone still, eyes fixed straight ahead, trained not to react but unable not to hear. Somewhere in the back of the room, a glass had been set down and not picked up again.
"And when you became a young woman," she added softly, almost pleading now, "who was the one who sat with you? Who explained everything, who stayed by your side so you wouldn't be scared or confused? Who made sure you felt safe?"
No one spoke.
The silence stretched, heavy and suffocating.
Because deep down, they all knew the answer.
I had taken care of them. I had been there for everything. Every moment that mattered.
A long moment passed before Tessa let out a scoff, flipping her hair over her right shoulder with open disdain.
"Do you think I care?" she said coldly, her voice dripping with indifference. "Whatever she did doesn't count. She's not my real mom."
Adrian let out a harsh, mocking laugh, his expression twisted with contempt. His left hand curled on the tablecloth, and his knuckles cracked one at a time, pinky to thumb, slow and deliberate.
"Exactly," he sneered. "Just look at her. You really think this broke, pathetic woman deserved to be our mother? Not in a million years. She's nothing in this Family."
His words cut through the room like a blade.
Then, without warning, he slammed a folder down onto the table in front of everyone.
The sharp sound echoed through the silent room like a gunshot.
A blood verification test.
