Page 189 of Titus

I honestly needed this place to myself right now. Between having to call our mother and not knowing how the hell the conversation would go, I needed time to think and figure out exactly what I was going to say and how to say it.

What the hell am I supposed to tell her?

I did not want to make this call, but I needed a way to meet with that family, and whether I liked it or not, my mother was my only path to them.

I had about thirty minutes until it would be six in the morning in France, where she now lived. I poured a glass of wine, sat out on my balcony, and tried to let the cool breeze and the sound of the ocean unwind my mind.

Unfortunately, nothing was working to relax me. I swear, I felt like a zombie with the ladies after they’d picked me up from the cottage. And God knows I tried to keep my mind off everything, but nothing worked.

I finally acknowledged that watching Titus get arrested was truly traumatizing. The hardest part was feeling a deep longing to be in his arms once more and to wake up thinking it was all just a terrible nightmare.

But it wasn’t. It was very real, and the man I’d fallen pretty damn hard for was sitting in some federal detention facility.

Fucking unreal.

As I thought back to my meeting with Jim and Spencer, it felt like every answer Jim gave me raised three more questions, and no matter how many times I replayed the conversation in my head, one thing still refused to make sense.

The Valdéz family was attached to the investigation. That didn’t necessarily make them responsible for it. They were good people. I just couldn’t understand why a family my mother had worked for would knowingly help destroy a man for something his father did decades ago.

The more I thought about it, the less it made sense.

Now, I had to find a way to bring this up with my mom. My relationship with her had never been easy, and we certainly weren’t the kind of family that talked every Sunday.

We were never one of those mothers and daughters who called each other to discuss their day. Years could pass with little more than a birthday text or holiday message between us. Our relationship had been reduced to being defined by sharing the same DNA.

I’m not sure whether living my life exactly the way she wanted would have made things different. That’s what pushed us apart in the first place. My mother was a strict, no-bullshit type, and as her child, you never questioned her.

The bigger problem was that she never prioritized my sister or me—not once—and she never hesitated to make us feel like an inconvenience while she devoted herself to that family. They weren’t just a job to her; they were everything.

Their approval mattered. Their needs mattered. Their lives mattered. Ours didn’t.

They made her feel important, admired, and needed. Meanwhile, her own daughters seemed to be nothing more than obligations she was forced to deal with while tending to the people she truly cared about. So she pushed us aside, again and again.

Even now, after all these years, I still believe that if the Valdéz family called and Amelia or I called at the same time, she would answer them first. She always had.

It was sad, but it was just the way things were. I’d moved on and made an amazing life for myself, and Amelia had a promising future with endless possibilities, too.

I picked up my phone before I could talk myself out of it. The number hadn’t changed, nor had the knot in my stomach while the phone rang.

I took another sip of wine while I waited for her to answer.

“Catalina?”

Wow. Her voice sounded exactly the same.

“You must really want something if you’re calling me at six in the morning.”

I laughed despite myself. “I probably deserve that.”

“I’d say so.”

The corner of my mouth lifted.

Some things apparently never changed.

“How are you, mamá?”

“That’s an interesting question to ask after three years.”