Not me.

You.”

His face twisted.

“You’re my mother,” he said, as though that were an argument, as though it were a shield.

“Yes,” I said, and my voice, which had held steady through the recordings and the forgeries and the video of my own blood on the floor, finally trembled, just once.

“Yes.

And you were my son.

You were my son before you decided to become my predator.” For one moment something broke open across his face, some flash of the boy I had raised, some grief for what he had made of himself.