Jack's voice cracked open, venom seeping through the performance of grief like acid eating cloth. "You son of a whore. You stole everything. Every scrap of who I was, every future I might've had. You turned it all to ash."
The mask shattered completely.
"And you, Mom—Patricia—" A laugh tore out of him, jagged and corrosive. "I'll never forgive you either. Not that you care. Not that it would even register. Turns out I'm not really your son anyway. Just learned that little bombshell. Suddenly Dad's obsession with keeping you at arm's length makes perfect sense. Toxic stepmother, right?"
The reveal detonated in the living room. Every gaze snapped to Patricia.
I already knew. She'd told me weeks earlier—long before I began dismantling Jack's life piece by piece, before I dragged every buried crime into daylight, before I reduced his future to cinders. That single truth had let me hunt him without remorse, without second-guessing the collateral pain to a woman I actually cared about.
