THE HATE

“Son? So they are right? You are free!” He spoke in faint whispers of her painful sobs.

“Don’t speak to me, Hellen!”

Hellen?

She could not even meet her son’s gaze. Pain cut through her fresh bones in a way it had never done before. The son she gave birth to and nursed through all the toils and challenges now could not even give the mere respect of addressing her as she merited.

Ejay stood before his mother, the air thick with tension and emotions swirling within him like a tempest. For years, he had carried the weight of unrequited banging questions that never allowed him to rest even a single day. The burden of the painful past is shrouded in deep secrecy and deceit. Now, facing her, his heart pounded with a mix of anger, hurt, and the burning desire for the truth. After learning the truth by himself, he had not had the courage to face her, but that day he dared to. Not even after finding the truth about his real identity was he able to sleep at peace. That part of his life hurt him.

“I see that you are still in contact with the same people that you hid me from, Hellen!” Ejay began.

“Ejay, I…”

He raised his walking stick to cut her off once again. "Hellen," Ejay began, his voice trembling with restrained fury. "I've carried the weight of your silence for far too long. You kept the truth from me, deprived me of knowing who my parents were, and I tried my best to bear with your lies. How could you be so selfish, so heartless, and so stupid to hide me from my own father, huh?"

Hellen's eyes widened with a mix of guilt and sorrow. She regretted not telling her son the truth, but still, she doubted what good that would have done. She also did not appreciate how Ejay was talking to her, like she was something that he hated so much. "Ejay, I did what I thought was best for you. I wanted to protect you."

"Protect me?" Ejay scoffed, his tone laced with bitterness. "You robbed me of my identity, my rights, and my history. You let me live a pathetic life of pure lies in the darkness of my true roots. You watched me suffer every single day while I struggled to find my place in this world. I begged you to tell me even just the name of that bastard that fathered me, but you looked boldly every single time and fed me more lies."

“He didn’t want you. He did not want us. You did not deserve to know anything about that man.” His mother retired.

The words echoed with the same sense as before with Ejay. “I have grown so sick and tired of those fucking phrases of yours. I have heard them since I was little. They became like an itching lullaby that I destroyed and that I still detest so much. And they made me detest you so much when I finally learned the truth. Just how could you?”

Tears welled up in Hellen's eyes as she reached out, her voice pleading, "I am so sorry, son! I -”

“I am not your son!” His cold voice reverberated through the corners of the whole room, shaking the weak walls to their foundation. His eyes confirmed an inferno of burning rage. “Is that how parents treat their children? By lying to them? Depriving them of their rights?”

Hellen shuddered before her son. She spoke calmly amidst the trembles. “I know I made a mistake. But I did it out of love, Ejay! I was helpless. My hands were tired. I had no one to fight for me to help you get acknowledged and live the kind of rights that you deserved.”

“Because you were a coward, Hellen! You had me to fight for, to serve as your fighting spirit. But you could not do a thing because you are a coward!” Ejay spits the insult straight into her face, his eyes unblinking.

The insults slapped Hellen to the face and down to her bones. “I am sorry, Ejay.” She whimpered, pleading for forgiveness.

"Your sorry is useless at this point in my life, woman! Your fear destroyed me! You let me live in this pit with nothing, being laughed at by everyone. I lived like a poor rat, barely surviving each day, while I was rightfully entitled to an entire multi-billion-dollar fortune. " Ejay retorted, his voice raw with pain. "Do you have any idea what I went through? The torment of not knowing who I am or where I come from? The emptiness that haunted me every single day? And do you know what I felt when I learned about my connection with those fucking Azzuas? Do you know what I feel right now?"

“I know you feel cheated and lied to. But, Ejay, there is nothing we can do. You simply can force yourself on people.” Hellen hung her head, unable to meet her son's gaze. Then she raised it slowly, meeting her son’s grave eyes. "I'm sorry, Ejay. I should have been honest with you from the start. I was young, naive, and afraid. Please forgive me."

"Forget forgiveness because I hate you so much. You are no different from those people. You are even worse if you had the courage to watch me almost die in poverty, knowing that I was entitled to the Azzua fortune.” Ejay's voice cracked, the wounds of abandonment resurfacing.

“But there was no way they were going to let you have even a single cent of it, Ejay! All your father could think of was sending some stupid cash for your upkeep.

“What?”

That echoes in the whole room, and then a moment of screaming silence is etched as their eyes lock. Hellen’s tongue had just slipped. He did plan on revealing that part of the story to Ejay. But it had just slipped out, and the weight of it was etched in Ejay’s flaming eyes, while furrows of shock were etched on his face.

He took slow, threatening steps toward his mother, sealing the gap that was between them. “Speak! Not a single word should be left out if you don’t want to awaken the demon in me!”