"And whose fault is that? Didn't you do the same thing to me, you absolute fucking…?" He stopped and looked down at the babies who were looking up at him warily, almost as if they sensed the anger in their daddy. Cadmus stepped back and ran his hand over the back of his head the way he always does when frustrated before turning back to me.
"You're lucky I haven't already broken your fucking neck, you'd do well to not say another fucking word in my presence. From now on, what I do with my sons has nothing to do with you. Don't even think about getting in my way. And before you look at me like that, remember that this is your doing." His voice had lost some of the heat for our babies sake, but each word pierced me like a well-aimed dagger.
I've seen Cadmus mad before but never at me, and never this vicious. But it was the look on his face more so than his words that had cut me to the core. The light that had always been there when he looked at me was no more. All I saw there were disgust and hate. It was as if all those many warm nights spent wrapped around each other had never been. The man looking back at me was nothing more than a stranger.
I knew that he was very scary yo the people who crossed him , but had never thought that I will be the one on his his top hit list one day. It almost broke me and I hated myself for the lies and secrets that I was keeping from him .
I can't say that I was surprised when he made the decision to take his sons against my wishes. That's why we were at the mall waiting for him now. He'd left the apartment after telling me he had some things to take care of before coming back to us. I didn't dare ask him what things, and after overhearing him on the phone ordering someone to come sit outside my apartment, I didn't know if to be relieved or fearful.
The fear I felt for my mother paled in comparison to what I now felt for Cadmus, the man I'd loved with my whole being. He'd always been gentle with me and had always gone out of his way to shield me from what he used to call his more volatile side, something I'd seen only once when a colleague had gotten too close one night in a drunken stupor.