to the floor with a scream and immediately she starts punching and slapping her. It all happens so fast that for a moment, I’m frozen in place.
“How dare you!” Nicky screams, her voice screechy like that of a wild cat. “Who the fuck do you think you are, bitch?”
Mom starts kicking and hitting back, pulling each other’s hair, spurring me into action. I start pulling Nicky off of mom as Cole pulls Mom away from Nicky.
“You deceitful, malicious bitch!” Nicky shouts, tears running down her face as she fight my hold to get back at my mother. “You have no right to speak about my daughter like that.”
“Your daughter is it?” Mom pants. “I don’t think she looks at you that way. You’re not her mother. Hell, women like you don’t deserve to be mothers.”
“Bitch, I will fuck you up!” Nicky threatens.
“Yes, you go step-mommy!” Liam hollers, a grin on his face as he lays back on the couch with his feet propped up on the coffee table.
“Go ahead,” Mom taunts, shaking out of Cole’s hold, looking all invincible with bleeding scratches on her cheek. “If you feel like letting that white trailer-trash, hood street-justice show, then do it! Just know she’s gone because you didn’t protect her.”
“I didn’t protect her?” Nicky screeches. “I might have not told her I’m her mother but she’s my child, my daughter, I’ll always fight for her. The same can’t be said about you.”
“Watch your mouth, I fight for my family, too,” Mom fires back.
Nicky throws her head back and starts laughing, the tension in her body easing.
“Family?” Nicky starts, her voice taunting. “What family are you talking about, Courtney?”
I don’t know what it is about how Nicky says those words or the malicious smile on her face as she doubles over, peeling in sadistic laughter, but I watch as my mother grows stock-still like a freaking statue. Her face smooths into an impassive mask and her eyes harden.
“I suggest you go manic somewhere else before you say something that will hurt you,” Mom threatens, her voice low and soft.
“Ah, there she is!” Nicky shouts. “There is the real Courtney Fitz-bitch! The woman who pretends to be all about family when she has never cared about said family in her entire miserable life.”
“Nicky…” Mom growls, but Nicky goes on like she didn’t say anything.
“I mean, do your children even know the truth?” Nicky says, cutting Mom off. “Do they know that about Aiden.”
Aiden?
Liam sits up straight now, his feet off the table.
“Shut your damn mouth,” Mom warns as she takes a step closer to Nicky who watches her right back.
“You are a coward. You dig other people’s lives up, then exploit their weaknesses, destroying families and relationships without a care in the world.”
“I’m warning you…”
“But you’re nothing more than a well-dressed liar. The only gold-digging bicycle I see here is you,” Nicky seethes. “You have no right to tell me about motherhood, seeing as you despised Aiden.”
“Shut up!”
“You hated him from the day John brought him home.”
What? John brought Aiden home? What does that mean?
“I swear if you don’t shut up,” Mom swears, but Nicky just scoffs, unperturbed.
“Do your boys know that Aiden was their half-brother, Courtney?”
“What the fuck?” Liam gasps, looking wildly between Mom and Nicky, then to me, denial so bright in his widened eyes, but Nicky isn’t done, not by a long shot.
“Do they know about what you did to Aiden when the poor boy was only seven years old? Do they know what you did, just so you could teach John a lesson?” Nicky questions, her voice so low, ominous and menacing.
What is she talking about? I was three years old and Liam was only a toddler when Aiden was that age. My mind starts racing, my heart palpitating in my chest like it’s about to give.
Aiden….
Something dark and painful is at the recesses of my mind, I can feel it hovering over me, like a distant memory flitting across my mind, demanding to be let free. The blood in my veins simmers, I can hear the almost violent swishing as my vision narrows until it’s like I have tunnel vision focused now on my mother.
“Help me…”
I freeze as the memory I’ve managed to suppress slams into me, the voice so chillingly clear that for a moment, I could swear I heard my brother’s anguished voice, filled with fear, crying out for help.
I look up and see mom’s face. It’s so pale now, almost as white as a sheet. Sweat