Cade....

Ready to face my mother, I don't even dignify my arrival with a polite knock on her office door. Instead, I push it open with my impatient palms. "Out!" I bark out a churlish order to my mother's loyal and long-serving PA. Not even attempting to argue, he grabs hold of a folder from off the desk before scuttling right past me.

Somewhat startled, mother glares at me with wide and unimpressed eyes. "What the hell do you think you are doing?" She barks in my fuming direction.

With unwavering quick strides, I slam both my hands down onto her desk with utter fury. "What the hell am I doing? Don't you mean what the hell are you doing?"

Becoming almost rigid with indifference, mother speaks using only an annoyingly flat voice. "Stop being so over dramatic, Cade. I did you a favour last night." She actually smiles at me—actually fucking smiles.

My mouth slackens with angered disbelief. "You really don't give a shit about what you did last night, do you?" Shaking my head with growing disgust, I keep my furious gaze on her. "You don't actually care whether you were wrong or whether you were right about it. You just saw something, and thought that you could use it against me in some twisted hurtful way. But what you saw between Sophia and her ex, was nothing."

"I'd hardly say that a kiss like that was nothing." Mother casually replies, curling her lip with a sarcastic grimace.

"Well, it was." I furiously retort, standing taller now on the opposite side of her desk.

"Is that what your little tick told you?" Her grimace becomes an ugly sneer. "And you believe her?" She now sniggers with an accentuated roll of her small and cruel eyes.

Engulfed with blind rage, my voice becomes nothing more than an aggressive bellow. "Her name is Sophia, and you will call her by that name!" I'm just so angry, I fear I may lose all self control. Lowering my head and just taking a moment all to myself, I try to contain the fury that pounds around my entire body. Mine and my mothers relationship is so mutually destructive, I just need to end it now. Withholding my anger, I keep my voice solidly calm. "Sophia has never given me any reason to doubt what she has told me. But you, I doubt every single thing that poisonously passes your lips. I doubt every single thing that you say or do, because you are nothing but a malignancy. I have spent my entire life, wondering what I have done for you to hate me so much. I have spent my entire life slowly becoming you, because I haven't been shown any other way of how to function as a normal human being. I hate myself, because of you! I see a fucking therapist, because of you!" My rage is starting to bubble beneath my skin, just waiting to escape through my forbearing pores. "I know that you just hate to see me happy. I know it seems to be something that you just can't stand to see. But I am happy. Sophia, she makes me happy. Which is why, I'm done. I am done with you. I am done with this place. I am done with anything that has been touched by you."

Mother doesn't even blink or move a muscle, she just keeps her scowling eyes firmly on me. "You're giving everything up for this Sophia?" She says Sophia's name in a desultory way; sceptically undisturbed.

Just as unmoved, I sneer with my confident reply. "In the end, I would have anyway. Sophia has just made me see sense, much sooner." No doubt, my mother is now arming herself with yet another one of her condescending remarks. Only, I don't give her enough time. "I will honour the ongoing cases that I have...then I'm gone." I enjoy telling her that. I enjoy its finality. Enjoying the enjoyment of it all, I slowly turn my back on my mother, ready to leave her and all of her poison behind.

"You're making a big mistake, Cade." If she thinks that will stop me in my strides, she has another thing coming. Picking up my defiant pace, I am just reaching for the door. "Your tick will soon tire of you. You're too damaged to love. Believe me, I know all about that."

That's when all of my fury and composure detonates—detonating within, and all around me. Twisting around hard, I almost run back to where she poisonously sits behind her desk, wanting to physically cause harm to the woman who gave birth to me. "You are intent on ruining my life, aren't you? Why is that? Why can't you just leave me the fuck alone?" With one destructive hand, I backhand anything that's on her desk and in my furious way; causing it to fly across the room. "You have always hated me. Why? What have I done? I want answers and I want them right fucking now!" The same destructive hand, slams itself down onto the hard walnut desk. "I'm not leaving this room until you tell me why?" My voice is menacingly hoarse as I lean slightly forward, refusing to let my mother get out of giving me the truth. I've had enough. Today is the day that I find out why she hates me so much. Leaning in even more menacingly, with an overly clenched jaw, I slowly ask my mother. "Why am I too damaged for you to love?" I hit a wall of stubborn silence. Mother just sits there. Emotionless and quiet. Slamming both of my fists down, I demand to know. "Tell my why?! Now!" My fists come down again, harder and more angrier than before. "Why?!"

More silence, but mother nervously swallows. She knows there is no going back now. She started this. She now needs to finish this. Sitting taller in her chair, her dead eyes slowly lift back to mine. "It's not that I didn't want to love you...I just couldn't." Her voice is now shakily quiet; apprehension keeping the volume of her voice right down. "How could I love something that reminded me of something so awful?" Is the next confusing thing to quietly fall out of her mouth.

Losing patience with her for talking cryptic shit to me, I shout again. "What does that even mean?" My anger can't take anymore. It pleads with her to stop torturing it.

Between my anger and the four office walls, comes my mother's shaken and recoiled answer. "I was raped." Her voice then becomes smaller and more bitterly regretful when she says it again. "I was raped."

Chillingly immobilised, I try to process her reply in my head. That reply, now numbly whirs around my stunned grey matter, trying to make some sense of it. Hoping that my mothers words are not the ones that I think they are, I find myself needing to ask her to repeat them once again to me. "What did you just say?" I need to be sure. I need to just hear it again, just to be absolutely sure this time.

Tears begin to fill my mother's lifeless eyes, making them look bright and glassy within their salty sadness. "I was raped, Cade." Time then numbly stops. The room becomes unfeelingly quiet. Mother looks ashamedly contrite. She has never worn such an expression, but now, she is candidly wearing it as she stares back at me from where she is still seated. "I was attacked after being at a party. I'd had a stupid argument with your father, who was my boyfriend at the time. We had argued over him smoking a cigar with his friends. It was just a stupid argument, but I stormed out and started walking home." Mother looks down at her desk, obviously struggling with the memory of it all. "Someone came up behind me, dragged me into an alleyway, then raped me. He said nothing, but he was violently strong. I had no time to fight back. No time to scream. I was so terrified, I wasn't even registering what was happening until he was inside of me. Then as quick as it had happened, it was over. He ran back up the alleyway, and was gone." Needing to wipe a falling tear from her weathered cheek, mother emotionally carries on. "I wasn't the same after that night. Your father knew something wasn't right, but I couldn't talk to him about what had happened. I couldn't bear him touching me. I couldn't bear him being anywhere near me. I was in total denial for many weeks. When I discovered that I was pregnant, I finally had to face what I had been trying to deny. I had to face what happened that night. I told my parents first. My plan was to have you adopted, but father wouldn't even let me speak of it. I begged him to let me do it, but he refused. He thought it would bring shame to the Lapley front door. He even threatened to disown me if I went ahead with it. It was already in place that me and your father would eventually marry, because that is what our families wanted. So my father strongly insisted, that you would be brought up as your father's son."

My eyes narrow, narrowing with hurtful interest. "Did my father know that I wasn't his?" I fearfully ask, thinking that I already know the very painful answer to that question.

Mother blinks slowly, regaining her composure as she does. "Yes, he knew." Just as I thought, my father knew that I wasn't his. Which explains why he had a very hands-off approach with my upbringing. Mother is quick to add more to the painful tale. "He also knew about the attack. He knew everything, and yet he still chose to marry me." A sad smile slowly lifts the corners of her mournful mouth. "A promised life of luxury helped him in making that decision." There's a tone of bitterness to her broken voice, a resentment now very much present. "No one ever listened to me. Everyone wanted what they wanted, but no one listened to what I wanted." She sadly stares back at me, her eyes tearfully apologetic. "I knew I would never be able to love you. Even as you were growing inside of me, I knew that. Every little kick or every little flutter from you, just reminded me of that night. You hadn't even been born, and I already knew that I wouldn't be able to love you. I wanted you to be adopted, because I wanted what was best for you. But everyone around me thought they knew better, when they didn't. My father had drummed into me 'Once a Lapley, always a Lapley'. He didn't care about how you came into the world, it only mattered that you were in the world. But it mattered to me. It mattered how you were conceived. It mattered that you were born. It mattered, because you would become a constant reminder of that awful night. I was raped, and I wasn't allowed to forget it, because I was forced to keep you in my life." Fighting back tears, mother presses her thin lips together, taking in a few calming and deep breaths through her flaring nostrils. "Each day that I had to look at you, Cade, the deader I became inside." Not even bothering to wipe the tears from her cheeks, mother quietly adds. "I prayed that I would feel different, but I didn't. I felt nothing but revulsion and shame at the mere sight of you. Your father, he wanted to love you, but I wouldn't let him. He saw something in you, that I just couldn't. And because I couldn't, I didn't want him to be able to. Your father didn't marry me for love, so I certainly wasn't going to allow him to love something that I'd been forced to keep. He had helped my parents in forcing me to keep you. He was one of the people who had never listened to me, so why should he get to care about you, when he obviously never cared about me? My marriage to your father became deader than I was." Pulling out a tissue from a box on her desk, mother carefully daps her falling tears. "I know the years have been cruel to you, Cade, but the years haven't exactly been kind to me, either."

Now that I've heard it all, every painful part of it, I realise that everything has now changed—things are different, yet oddly, they are exactly the same. I now understand why my mother has never been able to love me, but it doesn't change that she couldn't. My mother's truth, doesn't undo all that she has so cruelly done to me over the years.

Yes, I now know why.

But no, it doesn't now absolve her.

I understand why she couldn't love me, but it doesn't change how she made me feel by being unable to love me. Her long-standing emotional neglect is something that I won't ever be able to forget. It's something that I don't think I'll ever be able to forgive. Then there's the shocking realisation that I am the product of rape.

How do I even begin to process that?

I am the son of a rapist.

I was created during a violent act.

The more I think, the deeper I feel myself retreating into a dark and confusing mess. But my thoughts just torturously keep coming.

I came to be, because of something so awful.

Maybe I was just born awful?

My father is a rapist, so what does that make me?

Is his evil embedded somewhere within me?

At the time of conception, did his depravity pass onto me?

Maybe that's why I sought help from my therapist?

Because I knew that something wasn't right with me.

I wasn't right, because everything was wrong.

I was born wrong.

Such unbearable things quietly persecute me. Thought by thought, I become more and more disconnected from reality. Such injurious things now bombard my pounding head.

Will Sophia still want me?

Will she be able to still love me when she knows that I am the son of a rapist?

My inner fears and thoughts, start to drain me of my energy. They are sucking all of the oxygen from out of my overly stressed lungs. I just need to get out of here. I need some quiet time in my office, just so I can figure some things out before I go and see Sophia. I just need to hold onto her. I need to cling onto the only thing that now makes any real sense to me. "I have to go." Blinking hard, I force myself to move away from my mother. Remaining in this room, is just too much. With a rigid turn, I start taking tense strides back towards the door.

"Cade?" I hear my mother quietly call out from behind me.

"What?" I ask with annoyance, too overwhelmed to answer in any other way.

"I'm sorry...for everything."

Turning slowly, I eye my mother with a mixture of sadness and disappointment. "I really am sorry for what happened to you, I really am. But nothing has changed. I will be leaving Lapley Law Firm, just as soon as I can." Then I leave her suffocating office and her suffocating secret behind me. I leave all the time I can still breathe. I am nothing but the constant reminder of my mother's rape, and now, she is the constant reminder that I am the result of that rape. Our mutual destruction continues. It shall always continue. It's just who we so painfully have become. But I want no part of it anymore. I just can't be a part of it anymore. What I need now, is some repairing time all to myself. To allow my mother's secret to devastatingly sink in. Then, I will need Sophia. I will need the safety of her love and understanding. I have to tell her the truth. I really need to share it, even though I know that it might be a truth too far for her.

All I can truly hope for, is that Sophia's love for me, is a love that is strong enough to make her stay. I cling onto that hope, because who I now am, has just got a whole lot uglier.

**WELL LOVELIES....WERE ANY OF YOU EXPECTING THAT??
THIS IS WHERE I BECOME TRULY ATTACHED TO CADE. FOR ALL OF HIS ARROGANCE AND HIS SELFISH WAYS...HE REALLY HAS HAD A LOT TO DEAL WITH IN HIS THWARTED LIFE.
WHAT DO YOU THINK SOPHIA WILL SAY?
DO YOU THINK HER LOVE FOR CADE IS ENOUGH TO GET THEM BOTH THROUGH MARGARET LAPLEY'S BOMBSHELL? 💔**