The Scream of Agony
ARIANA’S POV
She wasn’t my mother.
The words carved themselves into the walls of my skull, bleeding through my every thought like ink in water—spreading, staining, suffocating.
She wasn’t my mother.
I looked at her—no, looked at the woman I thought was my mother—and my throat tightened so fast I couldn’t breathe.
The scream ripped out of me before I even knew it was coming.
Loud.
Ragged.
Raw.
It tore through the air and slammed into her like a wave, and she flinched—actually flinched—as though I’d struck her.
Good.
Because she had destroyed me.
She had lied to me.
She had let me call her Mom. She had let me love her.
My lungs burned from the scream, but I didn’t stop. I screamed again—louder this time. I didn’t care if the birds scattered from the trees or if the sky cracked open. I wanted the universe to know that something sacred had been broken inside me.
And she… she just stood there. Crying. Watching me like a ghost watching the funeral of someone it had wronged.
Her hands trembled at her sides.
I hated her.
I loved her.
I didn’t know who I was anymore.
And that hurt more than anything.
She reached for me again, and I stepped back like her touch might kill me.
“How could you?” I choked out. My voice was hoarse from screaming, but I didn’t care. “How could you lie to me like this? For five years! I trusted you. I loved you.”
“I never wanted to lie—”
“Don’t!” I barked, stepping back again. “Don’t say that. Don’t pretend this was about me. This was about you surviving. You could’ve told me the truth. You could’ve left. You chose to stay. You chose to be her.”
She covered her face with her hands, sobbing now, like she was the one who had lost something.
But I had.
I lost everything.
And yet… pieces were falling into place—sharp, jagged, cruel little pieces.
The changes. The strange behavior. The first time I caught her smoking on the balcony, hands shaking as she lit the cigarette like someone desperate for calm.
My mother—my real mother—had hated smoking. She used to open windows and wave her arms dramatically if someone lit one near her.
And then there were the things she’d say after my father died—phrases I’d brushed off in my grief. “I love you like you’re my own daughter,” she’d whisper when she thought I was asleep.
I thought it was grief talking.
But it was guilt.
I didn’t know which was worse.
“What kind of daughter am I,” I whispered, more to myself than to her, “if I couldn’t even tell my own mother apart from a stranger?”
The pain was a living, breathing thing in my chest.
She didn’t answer. She just wept.
And I hated her for it.
Because I didn’t want her pain. I wanted answers.
I wrapped my arms around myself, desperate to hold the pieces of my world together before they shattered again. I could feel my body swaying, the edges of my vision blurring with dizziness. I was seconds from passing out, and part of me wanted to—just so I could escape this hell.
But I couldn’t fall apart.
Not yet.
I took a breath. Shaky. Thin. Broken.
Then another.
And then, finally, I looked up at her again.
Her face was blotchy from crying. She looked like a woman who had lived five lives in five years. A woman who wore a skin that didn’t belong to her.
But then a thought came to mind. What if she was being forced by someone to say all this? What if someone was threatening her with my life? I didn't know what else to think anymore.
“Who is he?” I said quietly. My voice was barely audible, but it cut through the air like a blade. “The man who made you do this. Who killed my mother. What’s his name?”
She hesitated.
But I saw the flicker in her eyes—the answer already sitting on her tongue.
And I already knew.
Even before she said it, I knew.
“Garry,” she whispered.
Of course.
Garry. That bastard.
That snake of a man.
The one my aunt married when she was too blinded by his charm to see the greed in his eyes.
He’d always been circling like a vulture, pretending to be innocent pretending to help—waiting for a crack in the family so he could wedge himself in. I always knew he was a two faced bastard.
But this?
This was beyond ambition.
This was murder.
I turned away from her, pressing the heel of my hand to my chest, as if I could massage my lungs into breathing properly again. Every breath hurt. Every heartbeat felt like betrayal.
“And now what?” I whispered. “He’s gone. He’s in prison. So why now? Why tell me all of this now?”
She was silent.
Too silent.
I turned back around, and the look on her face told me everything before she opened her mouth.
“No,” I breathed. “No—don’t tell me—” I stopped as I shook my head.
“He’s behind all of this right?” I rasped.
She nodded. “All of it.”
“But he’s in prison,” I said, confused. “He’s—he’s locked up. Has been for months.”
“No,” she said with a bitter laugh. “That’s what they want you to think.”
I stared at her, heart hammering.
“What do you mean?” I asked, my voice a whisper now.
She looked me dead in the eyes, and her voice was heavy with something I didn’t yet understand.
“He’s not done.”
And that was where the ground disappeared beneath me.
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