Chapter 113

During the little wrestling match of theirs, all Kaiden could think about was how lightweight this woman truly was. He already knew her to be anorexic, but now that she was in his arms, he felt the actual, sad reality.

Julia was about as tall as Aria, yet she weighed almost nothing in comparison. Aria was a healthy young woman who took good care of her body. She ate healthy food and developed good musculature through painstaking effort in the gym, so her weighing more than her mother was understandable, but it should never be to this degree.

"Let! Go!" she growled, but Kaiden didn't relent.

Instead, he spoke back with a tone that was in line with his previous hostile attitude. "Why are you attacking me? Because your daughter was forced to do unspeakable things? In case you forgot, that only happened because both of her parents abandoned her without leaving an ounce of support behind for her, but what's more disgusting is that they left her with two children to take care of. She worked night shifts in a bar and day shifts in a gym, but that wasn't enough to take care of your kids, so she did what she had to do, for no one else would. How exactly am I at fault for anything?"

His accusatory, harsh words had a profound effect on the woman who, at long last, ceased her futile resistance and then began weeping uncontrollably.

Kaiden was not in a rush, so he let Julia cry her heart out.

It took ten minutes for her to calm down, at which point Kaiden spoke up once again, this time losing the hostile edge in his voice. "Aria is my beloved girlfriend, and I would do anything to make her happy. The reason I came here was to see if her mother was truly a hedonistic vile druggie akin to the image I had of her in my head. To see if she was beyond salvation or not. Hearing your extreme amount of grief, I can't help but think that you care deeply for your children."

"O-of course I do! They are my everything!" Julia shouted defensively, but then her confused brain also understood his earlier words. "Wait, you're in a relationship? But I thought…"

"That I'm a pornstar? I am, but we are what you would call amateurs. I film myself with my lovers exclusively."

"Lovers? What do you mean?" the mother asked with a loud gasp. She cleaned her moist eyes with her fingers, after which she looked up at him, expectantly waiting for his answer.

"There were two other similarly unfortunate girls at the filming. Things happened, and I'm the lucky man who can now call himself the lover of three precious existences," Kaiden explained things patiently.

"… I see… So… she is okay?"

"I can't claim that she is as happy as she'd ever been since I've only known her for a month, but she is certainly very happy right now. Significantly happier than she was a month ago. Wait, I have a picture of her somewhere on my phone…" Kaiden fiddled around his apps until he found the selfie Aria had taken while he was princess carrying her. She was slyly looking at the camera while kissing him on the cheeks.

Julia reached for his phone with trembling hands. She studied the picture for a few seconds until her eyes teared up once again, but these were no tears of sorrow. She was so overjoyed her eyes were sparkling. "I-I can barely recognize her… She is just so happy!"

"That she is. Now, however, you've made me terribly confused. Why are you so caring of Aria when you cruelly abandoned her, with so much responsibility at that? She's not even 20 years old yet, but because of her parents' actions, she is basically single mothering two kids while also taking care of herself without even having higher education help her out with job opportunities."

His question made her wince, and her depressed state of being returned. "I have no words… I'm a complete failure of a mother."

Kaiden didn't feel like letting her shut down in her self-blaming. "That's just not true."

He then corrected, "I meant the former part of your statement, the one regarding you not having words. The latter is true—you did fuck up parenting pretty badly if I'm being honest. But you must have a story to tell, Julia. A mother who voluntarily leaves her children to their own devices doesn't cry a river when she learns of their tragic fates."

"I said-"

She was cut off once again.

"None of us are saints. When my mother disowned me, I pretended to be all good and everything, but deep down, it hurt me. As a result, I refused to call her 'mother' but by her real name, despite knowing full well that she loved me dearly and did what she did solely for my sake. I knew coldly calling her by her name would hurt her, so I did it as a form of my extremely petty revenge."

"I'm… sure there's a lot to that story…" Julia muttered while trying to grasp his home situation. "But you're right. There's more to my story as well. However, if I say it, I fear it will come off as me justifying myself…"

"Stop your brooding. Unless you tell me what's going on, you will be the greatest failure a mother could ever be in my eyes, so you can't ruin your image any further as far as my opinion of you is concerned."

Kaiden's statement made the woman whimper once again, but after a few seconds of silence, she nodded and told her story. "The man who calls himself my boyfriend and runs this establishment is a local gangster who eyed me for a long while. Back when my husband left me, I was at the lowest point of my life—or to be more correct, up until that point in my life—so I stupidly thought, why not give this guy a chance? What's the worst that could happen? Maybe my life would be more exciting if I dated a gangster. That was the dumbest decision I could've ever made."

Julia spat her final sentence with fury, and after a short break where she collected her thoughts, she continued. "I quickly realized that this life was not what I wanted for myself or my children, at which point I broke up with him and planned to start working as many shifts as a waitress as was required so that we could escape the slums. He, however, took my breakup as a personal offense committed against his person, which was when I received my first beating. Our arguments quickly devolved, and things got worse, at which point he started threatening the safety of my children.

He gave me an ultimatum, which said that either I become his obedient lover or he would harm them. I know that the reasonable action on my part at that point would've been going to the police, but I didn't dare put my children's lives on the line. If I just did as I was told, they would be safe. Thus, I put my head down and obeyed."

"But why not just grab them and go to the police together? Say that your lives are in danger, you'll receive protection," Kaiden argued.