My General Mother Ruined Me For My Cousin—Then Regretted It Too Late Chapter 10
After the plane disappeared, my mother drove back to the estate in silence. She walked through the empty rooms like a ghost. Everything was in its place. Nothing was right.
A staff member met her at the door. “General. Robert Vale is at the gate. He says he’s Sienna’s father.”
Robert Vale stumbled through the front door reeking of cheap whiskey. Bloodshot eyes. Filthy clothes. A grin like a crack in old leather.
“Look who it is! Heard my little girl was marrying Caldwell money. Makes me practically family, doesn’t it?”
My mother’s vision went red. Every ounce of rage she’d been swallowing for weeks found a target. She grabbed the walking stick from the stand by the door.
“You DARE? The Caldwell engagement is GONE. Your daughter poisoned my child and her name is worth LESS than the dirt on your shoes! I spent twenty years cleaning up YOUR mess because I thought I owed it to Cecilia!”
Robert howled and scrambled behind the furniture. “Stop! You want to talk about Cecilia? Your precious best friend? Let me tell you about your precious best friend!” He was cornered. Panting. “She was never your friend. She was JEALOUS. Jealous that YOU got to marry Jonathan—the one with the Hart fortune and the future. The night before your wedding, she was going to drug his drink, get pregnant, and force him to marry her.”
“But she got the rooms mixed up. She crawled into MY bed. And I was drunk and never said no. She woke up the next morning and realized she’d trapped herself with the wrong man.”
My mother stopped breathing.
“You spent twenty years feeling guilty,” Robert spat, “over a woman who tried to STEAL your husband. You raised her daughter like she was precious while you starved your own kid—for a backstabber who betrayed you before you even said your vows.”
The walking stick hit the floor. Twenty years. All of it—for a woman who had tried to destroy her first.
The sound that came out of her wasn’t a word.
She ran. To the car. To the airfield. She called every contact she had and chartered the fastest private flight she could find. But by the time she reached the ranch, it was too late. Private property. Security teams. Legal boundaries. And even if she’d crossed them—what then? Demand her adult daughter accept an apology that was twenty years too late?
She stood at the edge of the property line, wind screaming across the prairie, and called my name until her voice broke.
“MIA!” The wind swallowed everything.
The years that followed were quiet.
Damien and I built a life on the ranch. Real work. Calloused hands. He ran Blackwood Security from a home office with a view of the mountains. I helped with the veterans’ rehabilitation program—something I actually knew about, from a lifetime of watching soldiers come and go.
Helena visited twice a year with a trunk full of gifts, always finding an excuse to stay an extra week. She taught me Damien’s favorite childhood recipes. Helped me hang curtains in the nursery when I was pregnant with our first.
My father came when he could. He’d sit on the porch with Damien, two men watching the sunset, saying almost nothing. That was how they talked.
My mother sent letters. Dozens. Every month, a thick envelope arrived at the ranch. I never opened a single one. I couldn’t throw them away either, so Tessa kept them in a box in the attic. Every year, the box got heavier.
One evening, Damien and I sat on the porch. Our two kids chased fireflies across the lawn. The mountains were going purple in the fading light.
“She still comes every year,” he said quietly. “Your birthday. The security team reports it. She waits at the property line.”
I was quiet for a long time. The wound had scarred over. I could poke at it without bleeding. But the scar was still there.
“The day she had me dragged onto that training floor,” I said, “I stopped listening to her reasons. For nineteen years, I had lived on one hope: that someday she would choose me. That punishment didn’t just draw blood. It took the last piece of me that still believed.”
I leaned my head against his shoulder. “There’s nothing left to fix.”
“Then we won’t see her.” He tightened his arm around me. “Whatever you want. Every year. Forever.”
Our daughter caught a firefly in her cupped hands, laughing. She had Damien’s dark hair and my stubborn chin. She would never know what it felt like to be unwanted. Neither of my children ever would.
Tessa appeared with a tray of lemonade. “The little terrors are wiped out. Bedtime in thirty, or they’ll be impossible.”
Damien groaned and stood. “I’ve got bath time. You stay.” He kissed me once—quicker this time, but no less tender—then loped across the lawn, scooping up one kid under each arm while they shrieked with joy.
I watched the stars come out. Brighter here than they ever were in D.C.—unspoiled by city lights and political ambition and the exhausting performance of being important.
Tessa settled into the chair beside me. Silver at her temples now. Laugh lines. “You’re happy, Miss Mia?”
I smiled—a real one, the kind that reaches your eyes. “Yeah, Tessa. I’m happy.”
Somewhere thousands of miles away, in a cold townhouse in Washington, my mother was probably sitting alone, surrounded by medals and commendations and the hollow echo of choices she could never undo.
I didn’t wish her harm. I didn’t wish her well.
I just didn’t wish her anything at all.