Saviors (Completed)

45. The Story About Mason

As I tried to remember how to breathe, my mind worked on overdrive. I was unable to speak, totally stunned as the information boomed inside my head.

How could they do something like that and why?

"So, it is Antonio?" I gulped, trying to picture myself calling Antonio Mason or even brother.

"Yes, it is. Doesn't he just fit perfectly into our little family?" My mom asked as she brushed away the picture so it went to the floor.

"Why? Why did they take him away?" I asked as I felt my body tense and my tears to start dripping. Why was I crying?

"That's a long story, my child, a story there isn't worth hearing," my mom said slowly, her words low and valuable. She was a shadow of her normal self and deep in my heart I understood. Her husband was in jail for seven years and her three kids wasn't on her side, but fighting against her. And one of them didn't even know that they were in fact her child.

I could see why she had a reason to cry, but still, I couldn't see why I was crying.

"Why?" That was the only thing I could make myself say. Every other word just disappeared.

"Do you trust me?"

"No." The answer was as easy as blinking and just as automatically. What did she think? That I would just trust her because she was crying over her lost son and maybe her criminal husband.

"Okay, but I need you to." He words were too desperate to be her. I blinked slowly, but it was still her. This was really my mother.

I took a deep breath and looked away from her. "I can't. I hope you understand."

"I understand. I choose your father's love over yours. I choose to take his side, even though I knew what he was doing to you." I gasped and looked back at her. Had she always known?8 "I have known for about a year and to be honest, I was angry at first, but I love your father and couldn't make myself do anything. I was afraid of losing him, like I had lost Mason."

"And you weren't afraid of losing me?"

She gulped and reached down in her pocket. "I did, but in some way the thought of losing John was more heartbreaking than the thought of losing you. I think I just always thought that you would stay, that there was nothing to worry about. That I had already lost enough and God couldn't take any more children from me."

"That's a shitty excuse!"

"I know, but it's the true. After Liam left I couldn't do anything to bring myself enough together to be a real mother, so I gave up on being a parent; I gave up on you."

The tears came quicker and dripped slowly down my cheeks, wetting my face. This was hard to hear, but I had to. "I still don't understand how you could do it."

"I did it for Mason."

"What do you mean?"

"He looks just like his father, even more than you and Liam. In some way, my brain just kept thinking that I couldn't let Mason's father go to jail, though it all sound so absurd now." She lifted her hands and folded them around her head.

After a moment of silence, I spoke. "Do you miss him?" My voice scarcely a whisper.

In three words, she broke my heart all over again. "All the time."

"Please tell me how it happened," I begged, keeping her eyes locked with mine.

She sighed. "Fine, but you have to listen. I'm not going to say it twice." I nodded as a respond and placed myself more comfortable on the chair. "A long time ago me and Gabriella Martinez was good friends. She had moved to this little town, while I had stayed in the city for a little longer, so when I came to town, she was happy. Her husband, Joseph, who wasn't her husband at the time, wasn't very good friends with John. John was the town's drug dealer at that time and had been in problems with Josephs family for a long time.