"Hm, this is quite troubling, to be honest." Mother continues. "There's a lot of important familial obligations that your Father and I will have to cover for you on. I can't quite tell you what these 'obligations' entail as a blank memory might've reset your moral compass as well."
"Cool story. Can you answer my question?" I roll my eyes. Truthfully, I just want to gauge her allegiance to me. Any extra information is cool and all, but she's not to be trusted. I'll have to corroborate whatever she says with someone else if possible.
"I know our relationship is strained, and it's mostly my fault but..." She looks me in my eyes. "I truly do love you, my son."
For a second, I'm almost fooled by her niceties. "I may not have my memories, Mother, but I am not stupid."
"And, I wasn't lying." She sighs. "You being on death door and this whole amnesia thing got me thinking a bit, I guess. There is an anger inside of me towards you as you're defiant towards our family's ways but there's also an uncontrollable love. Believe me or not, I felt the need to come clean with you. Who knows how long either of us will be alive."
"You still haven't answered my question."
"Boy, no wonder that bitch tried to kill your ass. You're awful with women." She scoffs. "It's been no more than 5-minutes of me pouring my heart out to you and you impatiently dismiss me for your agenda!"
"... Ok, I'm sorry." If apologizing will get her to talk, then-
"-I will." She finishes my thought. "Men are so fucking predictable."
Ignoring my urge to gouge out her rolling eyes, I let her speak as my interjections are only prolonging the conversation I realize.
"Where to start... Oh! Before I begin, please note that this is from a third-party perspective mostly. Some of the intricacies I didn't directly participate in so I might be off a little." While annoyed by her disclosure to avoid responsibility, I accept it as a fairly reasonable disclaimer.
"Your Father hired her to kill you." She drops a bombshell out of the gate.
"Then...?" I begin to put some of the puzzles together.
"Yes, I'm protecting you from him. Kind of. If you had your memory, you'd know that the reason he hired her to kill you isn't malicious. Though, he is a lot less loving than even my cold-heart..."
"Continue with the story." I cut off her rambling as my life is literally on the line. I've only been living the rich life for a week. I can't die now.
"Mind your manners!" She exclaims but continues her story anyway. "The thing was, Niki was hired to kill you WAY before she actually did. Your Father ended up hiring a new assassin to kill you because of how long she took. She clearly fell in love with you and decided to Romeo and Juliet. Her head was never all there. I mean, she's a pop star assassin that practically SCREAMS daddy issues. Oops, sorry. You have your own daddy issues, so that was rather insensitive."
"Quit toying with me and finish your novella." I roll my eyes at her petty teasing (of someone who doesn't even remember anything she's teasing about nonetheless).
"The thing is... you had a rather major mental breakdown the night before Niki offed you. Sorry, *tried* to." She looks away nervously.
"I won't press you for details on this 'breakdown' since you clearly won't speak on it anyway. I'm gathering you think I intentionally 'let' her kill me?"
"Precisely-- NOT!" She erupts in an ugly snort at her own joke. "In a sense, that's the conclusion I was leading you to with this 'story' since that's the conclusion YOU were leading me to. What I really think is that you staged your breakdown and then planned to stage your death so that you could escape high society and live as a peasant but something obviously went wrong. Call it mother's intuition."
Immediately, I react with fervor. "Why would I ever want to intentionally become poor?! Don't insult my intelligence to such a degree!"
'Oops.' This is likely out of character of Cain. I can gather from Mother's statements that rich-boy sniveling little bitch who constantly thought his life was hard because 'people only love me for my money and looks boo-hoo. Shut. The. F. Up. I won't stand to be associated with such stupidity even if it kills me.
"Are you really my son?" Her eyes narrow.
Shit.