A Mother's Bitter Lesson

Before Damon could even open his mouth, his mother, Judith Palmer, cut in sharply. "Drop the theatrics, Evelyn. How could the rest of us possibly miss a nut allergy when Lucas is already five years old? Do you really expect us to believe nobody else in this family has ever taken care of him?

"You are just looking for an excuse to go after Camilla," Judith continued, her tone dripping with disdain. "Kids don't make things up. Listen to your own boy—even he can tell how small-minded you're being right now. Shouldn't you take a long, hard look at your own behavior?"

Stepping forward, Judith wrapped her fingers around Lucas's small hand and guided him closer to the table. "Come here, sweetheart, Grandma will help you slice the cake. Camilla baked this whole thing specially for you, and breaking her heart by leaving it untouched wouldn't be right. Just tune your mother out. She's choosing to be unreasonable today, and we certainly won't stoop to her level."

Standing a few paces back, Evelyn watched Judith place a silver server over Lucas's hand to slice into the frosted tiers, plating pieces for every single person in the room while pointedly skipping her. A quiet, humorless laugh slipped past Evelyn's lips.

Judith's open hostility was hardly a surprise. Evelyn's marriage to Damon had only come about because their grandfathers had struck a pact decades ago, yet the Hale family's fortunes had long since collapsed, leaving them nowhere near equal to the wealthy Voss clan.

Because of that divide, Judith had viewed Evelyn as beneath them from day one, dead set on having her best friend's daughter, Camilla, marry into the household instead. Only Damon's late grandfather had refused to let the old promise slide, going so far as to threaten stripping Damon's right to take charge of the family empire if he backed out.

Right around that time, a catastrophic highway crash during a business trip had put Damon in intensive care, fighting for every breath. Rather than staying at his bedside while his survival hung in the balance, Camilla had packed her bags and fled overseas.

Once Damon finally pulled out of critical condition, a bleak depression settled over him, and receiving a brief breakup text from Camilla pushed him into marrying Evelyn on sheer impulse. Across the years that followed, Evelyn poured her energy into nursing his battered body back to full strength.

Early on, their marriage had at least operated on quiet mutual courtesy. Yet a man's first love clearly carried enough weight to wipe out years of steady devotion, and the moment Camilla set foot back in the country, everything Evelyn had painstakingly built with Damon fell apart.

"Mom, since you hate Camilla's cake so much, we aren't leaving a single bite for you," Lucas piped up, looking straight at her. "Take this as a lesson. Hopefully, you won't act like this next time."

Hearing such stiff, lecture-like phrasing come out of a five-year-old sounded deeply unnatural. Evelyn didn't have to guess to know an adult in this house had coached him on those exact lines.

Ever since Camilla's return, Damon's parents had invented endless excuses to take Lucas out of Evelyn's sight, pushing the boy to spend whole afternoons with Camilla so the two would bond. During every single outing, they fed him the same poison about what a terrible, spiteful woman his mother was.

Young children absorbed whatever adults repeated around them, and hearing the exact same fabrications day after day had turned lies into solid truth inside Lucas's head. Evelyn tried not to fault a five-year-old for being manipulated, yet hearing such blunt malice from her own child still hurt deeply.

She had nearly died bringing Lucas into this world. Stranded alone in a foreign country and badly injured back then, she had ignored every doctor warning her that keeping the baby would cost her life, stubbornly holding on so he could survive.

When he was finally delivered healthy and whole, she had wept until her voice gave out, cherishing him as a miracle from above. From infancy right up to his fifth birthday, she had poured more patience, warmth, and tireless care into raising him than almost any mother could offer.

Back in her previous life, refusing to accept that the son she treasured would genuinely trade her for an outsider, she had bent over backward trying every conceivable way to win him back.

All her desperation had ever earned was undisguised revulsion in Lucas's eyes. As the years passed, his resentment only hardened, culminating in the day he looked right at her and stated he was thoroughly ashamed to call a woman like her his mother.

"I really wish Camilla were my actual mom," Lucas said flatly, staring coldly across the table. "Then the kids at school wouldn't make fun of me, and nobody would go around saying my mom is crazy."