Chapter 132

"Sophia, can we please talk?" Victoria pleads as I turn to leave.

I freeze, studying her face. What more could there possibly be to discuss? Hadn't every bitter word already been spoken between us?

"There's nothing left to say, Mother," I reply, emphasizing the cold formality of the word.

Looking back, I realize how telling it was—the way I addressed them. While Isabella and Nathan called them Mom and Dad, I always used Father and Mother. Distant. Clinical. As if they were titles rather than family.

Deep down, I had always known. Parents don’t despise their children. They don’t look at them with disgust or treat them like a burden. I had stripped the warmth from those words because, in my heart, they had never truly been my parents.

"Please," she whispers, tears glistening in her eyes. "I’m begging you."

It’s surreal, seeing her like this—her face flushed, her expression vulnerable. This was a side of her I had never been allowed to see. For as long as I could remember, her gaze had been sharp, her lips perpetually pressed into a thin line of disapproval.

"Why don’t you show me to our table while they talk?" Rosalind—Ethan’s mother—interjects smoothly, cutting off whatever sharp retort I was about to deliver.

Natalie hesitates, her protective instincts flaring. She knew better than anyone how the Sterlings had treated me, despite blood supposedly binding us.

But Rosalind doesn’t give her a choice. Looping their arms together, she steers Natalie away, leaving me alone with the woman who had once shattered my heart.

I exhale sharply and drop into a chair. "Fine. Say whatever it is you need to say. But make it quick—I won’t sit here forever."

There was a time, long ago, when I adored her. When I was five or six, before I understood that love wasn’t supposed to feel like rejection. Before I realized she saw me as a mistake rather than a daughter.

She sits across from me, reaching for my hands. I pull back before she can touch me. That part of me—the little girl who had ached for her affection—was gone.

"I’m sorry, Sophia," she murmurs, her voice breaking. "More than you could ever know."

I stay silent.

For years, I had fantasized about this moment. Imagined her finally seeing me, finally loving me. I used to pray for it, dream of it, wish for it with every fiber of my being.

Now?

Nothing.

No relief. No joy. Just hollow emptiness.

"The way I treated you… it was unforgivable," she continues, her words trembling. "You were just a child, and instead of holding you close, I pushed you away. You loved us, and we gave you nothing but cruelty. If I could go back—if I could change it—"

Her tears fall freely now. Once, they might have broken me.

Not anymore.

Twenty-five years of pain don’t vanish with an apology. Some wounds don’t heal, no matter how many tears are shed.

"Let’s skip the theatrics," I say flatly. "If this is about my mother’s threat to your company, we can discuss it like adults. No need for the emotional manipulation—it won’t work on me."

I lean forward, my voice icy.

"So cut the crap and tell me what you really want."