The setting sun bled orange across the sky, staining the pond water with hues of pink and gold. In the dying light, the confrontation between father and son reached its painful climax.
"What do you need my help with?" Kian repeated, his voice a low, steady force, belying the storm inside him. 🙄
His father's gaze was desperate. "Son, I need one promise from you. But it must be more than just words. It must be a vow."
"Then tell me plainly," Kian demanded, his patience worn thin.
The older man's gray eyes, the one stark feature Kian had inherited from him, remained fixed on the ground. "If I die," he began, the words heavy with finality, "you must promise to take care of your stepmother and your unborn sibling. My wealth is gone. She doesn't work. We are surviving on the pity and donations of our neighbors."
Kian studied the man before him;a ghost of the father he once feared, now broken and pleading. A complex wave of obligation washed over him. 'I've been living on the remnants of the wealth he built,' he thought. 'As much as I despise him, this debt... this responsibility... is mine to bear.' But the past was a chain he couldn't easily break. He saw his chance to trade one burden for a piece of his shattered history. đź’¸
"Okay," Kian said, the word feeling like a stone in his throat. "I'll do it. But in return, I want an honest answer to one thing."
"Anything," his father whispered, a flicker of hope in his weary eyes.
"That time... Mother accused you of having affairs too. Was any of it true?" 🔍
His father's head snapped up, meeting Kian's gaze with a startling intensity. "No. I swear to you, on what little life I have left, I was not unfaithful. Your mother... she spread those rumors to justify her own actions, to shift the blame and muddy the waters."
The answer landed in the space between them, simple and devastating. It didn't erase the murder, but it reshaped the landscape of their family's ruin.
"Okay," Kian said again, the word hollow. "You should go now. It's almost dark." The conversation was over; he could bear no more.
They parted without another word. Kian stood alone, watching his father's frail, retreating figure disappear toward the college gate. The promise he had just made felt like an anchor chaining him to a past he longed to escape. And the truth he had just uncovered didn't bring the peace he expected. It only left him wondering if forgiveness was a mountain too steep to climb, or a necessary path he would now be forced to walk. đź–‡