Forest's Redemption

Only stupid women let stupid men father their children.

And my daughter is clearly not a stupid woman.

She bagged Lucas Greyson. My daughter bagged a billionaire who has his fingertips on everything and everyone in America. He has enough money, influence and support to bring that entire country to its knees.

And he's my son-in-law.

When I saw their pictures in magazines, I was over the moon.

I assumed it was a marriage of convenience, but didn't mind it one bit. Rich people need more than love to settle down with someone. Marriages for people with net worths like the Greysons are meant to be transactional; not loving and affectionate.

My girl has made enough waves to be seen as worthy of being with Lucas Greyson by the rest of the world. Any protests against their being together are met with an endless list of all her accolades, her professional and personal contacts and the impeccable skill she's shown in her profession.

It's official, no one is more deserving of being with Lucas Greyson than my daughter.

I did that.

She may have gone through some difficulties, but that girl is who she is because I dared to step out of a life of comfort and reach for the stars. And that star was Brian Kim.

He may be a difficult man with a beastly temper. He may hate her. He may want her dead, but he gave her his intelligence, his ruthlessness, his persistence and his devilishly good looks.

What more could she ask for?

Yes. He hurt her. He still wants to hurt. That man is probably on his way to her right now, but she is who she is because that man is her father.

She is who she is because her mother wanted a piece of the glamour, the money, the trips, the interviews, the fancy balls, the dinners with celebrities, the man who was the envy of all others.

She is who she is because her mother refused to settle for a mediocre life.

If I had chosen to stay a loving and devoted house wife, she wouldn't be here. If I had chosen safety and comfort over trying to be the wife of the next chairman to the Kim Group, she would have never existed.

Mediocre women want love, but I wanted more and clearly so does she.

Love dies. No matter how smart, capable and decent a man is ... no matter how much passion you once felt for one another, it all fades away in time.

But money doesn't. Power doesn't. Intellect doesn't.

She knows that. That's why she chose Lucas Greyson to father her child and not some worthless man with seed to spare.

I let capable men father both of those kids and today they are capable of ruling the world. I made sure only capable men could have the honour of saying they had kids with me.

Brian may be a monster, but his genes have thrived in Charlotte. She's strong, stubborn, wickedly smart and is, at her very core, as heartless, unforgiving and as merciless as him.

She may hate him, but she has no idea how much more she's like him than me. It's because of him that she's a survivor. It's because of him that she can get inside his head and take him down when so many before her have failed.

I can't bring myself to regret letting that man get me pregnant.

I know he may be a psychopath, but he gave me a strong daughter who, just like him and just like me, refuses to be mediocre.

If she had been anything less than perfect, she wouldn't have been able to have the husband she has right now. She would have settled for being his secretary or doing things for him that servants and cooks are paid to do.

If she weren't Brian's daughter, she wouldn't have gotten back up every time life knocked her down ... everytime he knocked her down.

Many women would have been okay with being Lucas Greyson's underling, but not my girl. Many women would have been okay with working for their rich husband or following him around like bumbling fool, but not my Charlotte.

She is perfection incarnate. She can stand on equal footing with the likes of Lucas Greyson because she is no mediocre women and Brian and I are the reason she is so exceptional.

I think that's where I made my mistake.

I focused on finding exceptional men instead making myself exceptional. I knew I had it in me, but by the time I met Nolan and then Brian, it was too late to try and be my own person.

Nolan wanted a child right away and he made it clear that he would walk away from me if I tried to delay it.

So I had Jona.

That's what I'll never forgive myself for - leaving Jona.

He only started speaking when he was four years old, but that's because he was so selective with who he interacted with. Nolan and I had to teach him the grey in betweens in life because he viewed everything as black and white. He didn't care if a child was crying because his cookie got taken away. If the child was naughty then he deserved to be punished.

As a mere toddler, Jona was my companion, my compass in life actually. His sense of justice was greater than his father's and when I felt too afraid to confront someone who was clearly in the wrong, his stern and judgmental look would give me the nudge I needed to do the right thing.

I wanted to take him with me when I left, but Nolan refused. He said it's okay if I go and let the world beat me up, but he wouldn't let his son endure that.

I thought he was lying when he said that. I thought he was blocking my path to greener and better pastures. He was blocking my path to being Mrs Kim.

Little did I know just how right he was because Brian quickly became my tormentor.

That could be the reason why I didn't fight harder for Charlotte. She may look a lot like me now that she's grown, but she was Brian's spitting image when she was a child. The colour in her skin didn't even start showing until she was seven years old. And she always saw everything as a competition to be won. Just like him.

Even when she was scared, starved, beaten and nearly left for dead, she refused to be anything but perfect when going to the outside world.

I'd see her trying to comb through her thick, matted curls and washing her face and body in a puddle when she was just a few years old. It didn't do anything to help qith her appearance, but maybe that made her feel better about going to school with kids who got bathed three times a day.

She tried hard at school even when she had gone days without a proper meal. She always wanted to show the world that deep inside she was better than what everyone else saw on the outside.

She didn't like losing even when everyone thought she had nothing to give to the world.

I resented her for the longest time.

She was the daughter of my abuser and she was the reason I couldn't go back to Nolan.

I'd be lying if I said there weren't times when I enjoyed beating her or starving her, but I made sure she stayed alive. I took her to Lorraine Greyson and she opened a world of possibilities for her.

Charlotte may not be my favourite child, but she's still my child nonetheless. If she wasn't, she wouldn't have been able to use her seductive charms to wrap the one and only Lucas Greyson around her finger. She has that man eating out of the palm of her hand and that's because she has my alluring charm.

No man can withstand that charm and she's using it on one of the strongest men in the world.

My kids will turn this world upside down until they rule it all.

And it's all because their mother didn't let stupid men father her kids.

Nolan was in charge of military espionage for one of the biggest countries in the world and Brian survived no less that twenty four assassination attempts by the time he was ten all because he was born into the biggest chaebol. Not only did the man survive, he killed off a few rival siblings and still managed to become the chairman after his parents disowned him for being with a woman they didn't approve of.

I'm a good mom.

Countless women have mediocre children because they allowed deadbeats to father them.

I'm a good mom.

I can convince Jona of that fact. He and I always clicked. He was a child when I left him, but he was my confidante. I was already in love with his father, but Jona made me love Nolan that much more because he gave me a child who refused to bend to the will of the world. He was always his own person and that has still not changed.

I'll keep trying to convince Jona to give me another chance ... but his sister will be trickier to convince.

"Mam", someone knocked on my door, "Mam, I'm letting you know that we depart in thirty minutes. Please be ready in fifteen so we can disassemble your structure and pack up."

"Okay!" I yelled out to the man outside. "I'll make sure I'm ready."

I grabbed the black jacket from the couch in the temporary building structure my son-in-law told his people to put me in. It was the last piece of item I had to put on in what can only be described as a pure black military ensemble with reflective lines circling the bottom of my pants.

We found at least fifty people wearing these kind of clothes the moment we stepped out of the underground bunker we were held in.

There were large bright lights being shown at us, dogs were barking, men were taking off in black SUVs, others were arriving in similar SUVs and there were all these black and white military grade structures around us the second we stepped out of the underground bunker we were held captive in.

I don't know when all of this was done.

But I knew when I saw a bullet come hurling towards Brian from behind that my daughter's husband already had people watching us and he was letting it look like he was stranded and caught off guard.

I acted in the nick of time and pointed an old fake gun at Brian convincingly because I am, in my hearts of hearts, a survivor. I saw all the invisible threads the second Brian tried to kill Jona and my daughter's took that bullet for him.

That girl has a man who willingly took a bullet for her brother.

She has surpassed me in all respects.

She has a man who is rich, capable AND loves her. She's hit the trifecta.

I am a good mom.

The only reason she met him in the first place is because of me. I'm the one who took her to Lorraine Greyson's kindergarten. I'm the one who tricked Brian into losing interest in her so he'd abandon her and go back home.

I know I messed up a bit, but she's a Greyson because of me. If it weren't for me she would have died as a child or before she graduated from university.

I nursed her while she was in hospital. I prayed for her. I fed her, brought ointments to heal her skin and scalp and grow her hair back.

I'm a good mom.

I cried when I saw what Brian did to her. I blamed myself and couldn't eat or sleep until she got out of that coma.

I'm a good mom.

And it's about time my kids acknowledged that.

I'll talk to her husband again.

The last time we spoke was a few hours ago and he was only focused on getting as much information out of me on Brian and Aera and the rest of his family.

I had to tell him repeatedly that I had no way of getting in touch with Aera. She's the one who has always called me when Brian tried to seek out Charlotte. She's the black sheep of the Kim family because she refused to have anything to do with the family.

They tried to marry her off, but she ran away and only resurfaced when she was thirty. She knew she'd be regarded as too old for any man at that age. They wanted her to study architecture because it was in line with the industry the Kim Group is in, but she made sure to flunk out of every class until her family let her study art, like she wanted to from the start.

She's considered the family's shame, but that's what's kept her alive.

Brian and his other siblings knew not to bother with her because she made it clear she had no interest in being a part of the family business, let alone running it one day. So there was never a need to kill her.

Being shunned by her family also made her invisible to them. They don't seem to notice her when she's hovering around while very important discussions are being had. And that's how she's been able to know when Brian was on the hunt for his own daughter.

I've only met her a few times. We were never close, but we shared a fondness for art. I think she appreciated that I praised her work and told her she'd be a great artist one day with her work in every major gallery in the world.

Maybe that's why she's tried to look out for Charlotte. I'll never know.

What I need to focus on right now is convincing my daughter's husband to talk to her and tell her that she'll need me to give birth to their baby. Childbirth is gruesome and unrelenting. She'll need her mother for that.

I marched towards him.

His back was facing me and he was some distance away, but I knew it was him.

The way he stands screams 'I have enough money to end countries.'

He's tall, taller than Brian and he has broad shoulders and muscles that give me the impression he's been in the military. He's a fine specimen of a man. There's no denying that.

Charlotte chose well.

Plus, he's the only one wearing an arm sling since he got shot in the shoulder. That made it easier to identify him through the wind and rain I was marching in.

My steps almost faltered as I inched closer to him.

There's a reason why he's standing alone.

The energy around the man is murderous. Everyone is probably too afraid to go near him.

"Uhm, Mr Greyson" , I tapped on his healthy shoulder and he turned around.

It was raining, the wind was blowing and it was muddy, but the man looked so divinely good that I forgot my words for a second.

Charlotte knows how to pick a husband. He looks ten times better in person than the pictures I've seen of him in magazines.

There's no way their child won't look like a model when Charlotte is the mother and this man right here is the father. That child will be the most attractive person in this world.

"I wanted to talk to you about Charlotte." I tried to remain undisturbed by the strong winds and rain and his brooding green eyes. "She'll need me in her life with everything that's been happening. She's pregnant. She'll need her mother to help her prepare for the baby and she'll also need me for at least two months after the baby is born."

I was maybe extending that two month period by a few weeks, but it's better to be on the safe side. A mother who just gave birth needs all the help she can get for as long as she can get it.

Her body won't look the same after giving birth and she won't want servants touching her newborn child. She'll need me there to show her how to get her body back, how to get rid of the stretch marks and the loose belly skin and how to get her breasts in tip top shape after breastfeeding; not to mention how to lose the baby weight.

I gave birth to two kids, but have the body of a twenty five year old because I knew how to handle postpardum. She'll need me if she plans on keeping her rich husband interested in her.

"There's also the matter of Brian." I added with a little more confidence this time. "Once she finds out he's after her again, she'll be in too much distress and she'll need a fellow woman to help her navigate through those pregnancy hormones so she doesn't do something stupid."

. . .

I think the wind and rain made him look scarier than he truly is.

Yes. That's it.

He wouldn't look at me like a panther that's about to rip its prey to shreds after the ordeal we went through together. I told him what Charlotte is too afraid to tell him or anyone else in the world. He can't be looking at me like he's about to rip out my throat.

It's the weather that's making him look so terrifying.

"You think Charlotte and I will let you go anywhere near our child?" He narrowed his eyes at me. "You think I will let you go anywhere near Charlotte?; especially when she's pregnant?"

. . .

I bit the inside of my lip.

I guess he isn't my in.

"Stay away from her." He warned me and he somehow grew taller. "I won't hesitate to kill you if you go anywhere near my wife and that's not hyperbole. I will literally kill you if you go near my wife."

I couldn't respond.

He meant what he said. I have no doubt about that.

He took out a phone out of his pocket while staring at me like my existence was of no consequence to him

"Christian", I heard him as he walked away, "are you at the clinic yet?"

I watched him walk through the storm with ease until he was too far for the eye to see.

I'll have to find another way into her life. Maybe Lorraine is my way back in. I recall she was always big on family.