Yunho PoV

The return was not the best.

If I had thought of finding Changmin at home to welcome me and look at that gift I had brought him, everything I had imagined vanished with the words of Khyuhyun.

I did not stop, walking quickly to my mother's room, where I opened the door and found her in front of the mirror, to settle her hair loose in her usual tail.

«No more knocking, my son?»

«Mother... Where's Changmin? What have you done with him?» they were my first words, looking at her reflection in the mirror, intent entirely on continuing his work.

She stopped there, observing me and mentioning one of her many smiles that she addressed to me.

«I thought of transferring him to another family. Jaejoong will fix it and you'll...» rose, letting her hair fall back on her shoulder, the gaze of a determined woman that I had rarely seen on the face of my mother.

«...and you should think of serious things and find a wife. You're way ahead of your time and this is the right time before the wine gets cheap.»

I was amazed by her words, so much so that I looked at her surprised.

«You're not serious, I guess. So you pushed Changmin away from me for this? Without even having my consent and touching what is MINE?» I trampled on the last word, remarking that no one, not even she who was the woman who had given me birth, could touch what belonged to me and Min was mine.

Her expression changed, keeping her serious eyes on my face. The expression of someone who was about to burst, but that woman did not burst with anger easily.

«Jung Yunho, listen to me. You'll stay away from that animal and take care of your life and the future of this family. Am I being clear?»

There was a hint of threat in that voice, I could hear it very well.

I kept my eye on her, I rarely did. As a devoted son I kept my head down to my mother's words, but not this time. Not when she dared touch my heart.

«He is not an animal and this family already has everything, as I have my future. Don't talk to him like that, Mother.»

I clenched my fists when she mentioned a funny laugh.

She really thought this was funny?

«So I shouldn't call someone who doesn't even have an education an animal? Someone who is sold for the purpose of serving and entertaining their master? Humans, people like us, are never treated like that. We don't have freedom sealed like them.»

«Just because it is our cursed society that has made this place hell for them does not mean that they are not people and humans with rights taken from them by what is our Lord.»

«YUNHO.»

A hand violently hit my right cheek in a sound slap that echoed in my mother's room.

I've really made she angry at this point, to get that far. She who never took the time to raise her hands.

My cheek began to burn, but I would not have touched it, I would have remained strong to this slight pain.

«Don't you dare say that again! Just like your father, have you lost your wits, too?»

«How to... Like my father?» I managed to say, completely surprised by that question of her and returning to look at my mother's face.

«What do you mean?»

Maybe there was something she didn't tell me, that she had never dared to reveal to me, because she avoided my gaze, turning around to go back to her mirror, but I stopped her by a wrist.

I had never dared to stop my mother like that, but those words of hers raised so many questions in me.

«Let me go! How dare you block your mother?»

«What did you just say about my father? Losing his mind? Mother, please talk.» I loosened my grip on her wrist and she moved her gaze to a point in the room, moving away from me to go to the large window that gave the rose garden.

«Why do you want to raise that point from our miserable past?»

«It was you who raised your voice, and I think I should know. What are you hiding from me, mother?»

I stayed in my place, the cheek where she hit me turning red very slowly.

She sighed, placing her hand on her chest and clutching the fabric of her shirt, closing her eyes.

She was hesitating to replicate, but one step I took made she open her eyes and began to speak, her eyes facing the garden outside those walls.

«What you just said a few seconds ago were the same words your father said a long time ago before he disappeared.»

«Before... Mother, you told me that...»

«That he's dead, I know. But he's really dead. Dead along with that...»

Her voice cracked, biting her lip and turning towards me, her eyes full of anger and sadness.

«He must have been ONLY a slave too. An object where you can vent your tension and your labors and nothing more. I just had to have his heart.»

«What are you talking about...?»

«Before we got married, your father had always had a slave with whom he walked every day and to whom he gave so much attention. A slave who learned to read and write, wearing even the finest fabrics he wore from his long and distant travels. When his family agreed with mine for the wedding, I thought it was only because he saw him as a "friend" or as a slave to be raised above the others just because he was the privileged of his master. But no... It wasn't just that.»

I could feel her anger, an anger I never thought I'd feel from her lips as she was talking about my father.

«I loved him, I still love him now and I would always have loved your father, the man I married.»

«Mother... He...»

«For him there was only that slave. That insignificant being who was worthless. For him, I was just someone who had to give him an heir, a son he could even raise with that animal. That's what he heard one night, talking to him in his room.
"We're gonna have a baby, you know?" I won't tell you the disgust and anger I felt at that moment... Me thinking that when you were born, I'd have a heart too.»

I was speechless. Did my father love a slave too? Did he go against my mother for a slave?

«Mother...» the news partly upset me, but I felt inside myself that I didn't need to know any more, but she continued that hidden piece of life.

«One day he had to go on a trip. You were recently born and I had not allowed that animal to come close to you, to touch you, arguing with your father many times. But that day he did something that led to a breakthrough. He wanted to take that slave and you with him. He only wanted to take you on that journey that would keep him away for several weeks. It was something I will not tolerate... Not for the family I'd thought of building and living with.» Her eyes took on a different light now, as if it were a secret victory mixed with melancholy and sadness, an ancient remorse that she had brought upon herself for years.

«He couldn't take you with them and I think it was one of the biggest fortunes of my life. Before his journey, their stupid journey, I took your father's water bottle, putting on a powerful sleeping pill. He just had to put him to sleep. But that dose didn't bring my husband back, he don't live. People mourned him, I mourned him too, as did his slave who had never left his body for funeral preparation. At that point, moved by pain, I blamed that boy, the one who had ruined my family and did not blink when he was executed. In fact... He blames himself, just hoping he can get close to...» her voice cracked and my face had that mask upset by that truth.

I couldn't believe that my father's death was the work of my mother and her jealousy.

«So... You killed my father... You who until recently had always told me that it was a tragic event of one of his slaves, leaving aside the part of his love for that boy. You... You who destroyed his family.» Now was my anger, I hate the woman in front of me.

«I just wanted to run this family and make it right, as it should be from the beginning. I would never have allowed... That he'd fall, and neither would you make the same mistake. He will never be able to give you anything and he will never be able to replace the wedding you will have with a woman to carry on this family and its name. Yunho, come back to your senses! It's not love!»

She approached me, clinging to the sleeve of my robe, but I moved, shaken by that tale.

«You... Mother, you don't know what love is. If you knew, you had never done this to my father and you had not even blamed the only person who really loved him. Who also gave his life not to live without him. And if you now tell me that it is not love, what I feel for Min and what he feels for me, know that I really intend to change the way this family works. I won't let it become your shadow and my father's sorrow.»

The tears began to violate my look, slipping down my cheek.

She had deprived me of my father's love and wisdom, she had deprived me of the man who loved me and who would raise me. Because he had never thought of abandoning me or even leaving that woman, but he wanted to live and I understood it, because it was what I also wanted at that time.

«Yunho, my son, please... Not...»

«Not a word. What you have just said must be made known to the Court of Justice and... I can only imagine that those acts of violence to which Min had been a victim when I was not there were also your work. From the way you spoke, mother, I can only deduce or be sure. And I don't even know why I'm still addressing you with this tone of respect for what you did to the man I love.»

I said it, I confessed it to that woman who was shaking like a leaf, trying to reach me to stop me, but I had no time.

I didn't have time to listen to her or even say anything else, because at that moment Khyuhyun and Siwon entered with their faces completely upset.

«Lord... Lord, Min was bought by...»

Khyuhyun's words made me snap.

«Alert the guards and put her in the basement. I'll take care of her when I get back.»

I hadn't even noticed Siwon, obviously there to help his friend given his condition.

I had to go immediately to Jaejoong and get the man I loved back.

I had to change the rules of that family and mark the steps of my father and his unjust death.

Author's note

Thank you for your reading and your votes and thank you, above all, for following it, as it is the work that I care most about.