The Blackmail Bride

Chapter 46 Part 2

Sad sad.

Families

Everything was a flash as I traveled to our family home. But it was also a blur where a hazy feeling seemed to drag the ride on forever.

The roads stretched on and on and on. But when I stepped out of the cab, it was as if I had teleported from Prestigio to my doorstep. And I was standing in front of the looming mansion I had lived in for eighteen years.

It was surreal—the feeling that I had. It was burning anger that waged war, and it was sadness that already knew defeat was final. As I stood there in front of the double doors, I was left with the decision to either charge in and inform my mother or retreat, calm down, rethink, regroup on how to break it gently to my mother about what I had seen.

Calm down? The memory was burned in the back of my head like an unwanted branding on a slave.

I stared at all-to-familiar wooden doors and tightened trembling fists.

Breaking it gently, huh?

How? It was incomprehensible.

Everything.

Suddenly my whole life was a lie.

My mind was on a frantic frustrating search on all the memories I had on file about my childhood, my family. It questioned all it remembered. Every family event, every holiday, all the words spoken to me, all the affections and all the time I was left home because they were busy.

And I still could not, in my right mind, comprehend the why's and how's.

A shaky hand reached for the doorknob and twisted it open.

I looked at the white marble flooring, at the cream walls, and the long empty hallway and all my memories came flooding in.

Just how?

When did it all go south?

Why did I never notice?

Why did this house look the same? The organized space was spotless, and as I looked around, there was no clue. Nothing. It was just me that suddenly had this... epiphany.

I didn't know.

"Isla!"

Mrs. Jefferson was coming down of the intricate curved staircases and jubilantly smiled down at me.

She was our head maid. And even the way she was welcoming me was no different from all the other countless times she had greeted me from childhood.

It gripped at my heart, squeezing painfully, as if automatically willing me to match her light tone. I wonder if anger was the automatic human response when things went wrong. There was nothing that you could shake out of me but fury.

And I stared at her blankly as she came closer. I couldn't even fake a greeting back to avoid hurting her feelings. Then she went in for a hug and my whole being rejected it.

I stepped back, and asked "Where's my mom?"

The old woman paused, and closely inspected my face, "Dear?" That hideous concern in her voice, "Is something wrong—?"

"Don't touch me!"

She had raised her hand as if to hold my face. But that loving tone, the concern dripping from her actions, that kindness wasn't welcome. I must've gone mad in that moment but I just couldn't accept all this warmth.

Because where do I put it in me? When my skin burned with the fires of hell but my heart was a cold blizzard?

"My mom," I stared at her shocked eyes, "Where the hell is she?"