Page 141 of Collateral Love
Channy sobbed softly.
“I needed money,” I continued. “Not for shoes. Not for bags but for his lawyers and his commissary. I had to care for his kids. For the nieces and nephews, you only half-claimed on holidays. I built a whole system to fix what you helped break.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it.
I leaned in.
“You didn’t just give them Jared,” I said. “You flipped him for a man who never claimed you in the daylight and a child you refused to stand next to. You betrayed him to protect a life that was already dying.”
The room went quiet.
My mother’s shoulders sagged for the first time in my life.
She looked… old.
Not just in years. In decisions.
“I did my best,” she whispered.
“No,” I said. “You did what was easiest for you.”
We sat in that for a moment.
I felt Channy shaking beside me. I wanted to reach for her, but I didn’t because I needed my Baby Bear to realize her mom deserved to die.
“For what it’s worth,” I said finally, voice softer, “Jared never stopped loving you. He never stopped waiting for you to tell the truth.”
She laughed bitterly. “Boys will love their mamas through anything.”
“Not anything,” I replied. “Just long enough.”
Channy wiped her face. “What happens to her now?” she whispered.
I looked at Zayden.
His face was unreadable.
“That depends,” he said.
My mother lifted her chin weakly. “On what? Are you going to kill me? Is that what this is? You're going to put a bullet in your own mother behind some thug shit?”
I stared at her.
“I don’t need you dead right now,” I said. “I need you to be useful.”
Xavier smiled, slow and humorless.
“Congratulations, Mrs. Davis,” he said. “You just became Exhibit A.”
She blinked.
“What?”
“You’re going to tell the court what you told us,” I said. “About Jared. About your statements. About the DA. About how eager they were to hear from a grieving mother with a son who ‘might have done it.’ You’re going to say it under oath with the same enthusiasm you used when you sold him out the first time.”
“And if I don’t?” she asked.
Zayden finally stepped forward.
