Van shook her head, "Doña Corazon I am not your granddaughter."
"You're Perla's daughter, my granddaughter!" Van froze at the mention of her mother's name. How does she know that?
"H...how do you know my mother?"
The woman's eyes were glassy as she spoke. "Perla was my daughter and I just found out she's dead and has two children. You have a brother Karl is his name right?"
Van inched away from the woman like she was some plague about to infect her. This cannot be happening…
"This cannot be happening." Van barely uttered the word, her mind was reeling from the revelation that she had grandparents...that her mother’s family are very much alive…
She shook her head, even though she knew without a doubt that Doña Corazon didn't have a reason to lie to her, she wanted to believe with all her heart that it was just a mistake, a misunderstanding even that could be sorted out but that cannot be because the woman knew her mother and brother’s names.
With all the turmoil going on inside of her, still none of it made sense to Van. Her mother did not come from a rich family if she did then why did she live a miserable life with Van’s father? And why had she left her husband and children to be with a rich man?
"If you're really my grandmother then how come i've never heard of you before?" Van demanded.
"Your grandfather did not approve of your mother’s marriage to Enrique Mendoza so he disowned her and cut all ties." that was news to Van.
"No you’re lying." even as she said it, Van didn't quite believe herself. Nevertheless her grandmother continued,
"When your mother came back to us she was distraught and apologised to your grandfather," she looked at Van with pity. "She said her life was hard and unhappy, that she always fights with her husband."
Van remembered those arguments vividly like it was yesterday. Those times when her parents used to argue about little things were the hardest for Van and Karl.
"Your mother was happy for a while but then your grandfather told her she has to agree to marry a man of his choosing but then your mother realised that she was still very much in love with your father but Felix wouldn’t hear of it, he couldn’t accept that she defied him a second time for a nobody like your father and so he locked her up but Perla managed to escape and we've never seen her again since then. That was three years ago."
Van felt like she was being suffocated. She had no idea she'd been crying until the tears trailed a path down her face. Three years ago her mother had left home for a few weeks after a heated argument with her father where he'd accused her of cheating, it was the longest her mother ever stayed away but Van never lost hope that she'd come back to them because they were her family.
Three years ago her corpse came back instead. There had been an accident and she'd died on the spot before help could come.
The answers Van always sought were staring her dead in the face, now she knew that her mother had never been unfaithful to her father, that there had been no one else in her life. For so long Van had been mad at her mother for abandoning them and now she finds out that that wasn't the case at all their mother loved them, her only problem was not being content with what Van's father gave her, she simply could not compromise because until then she'd lived a very luxurious life.
The night of the accident she'd been on her way home...to them.
Dominic was wrong, he'd been unfair to Van and that made her heart hurt even more.
Suddenly Van couldn’t breathe.
"I...i need some air." She croaked out and turned to leave the room only to stop when she saw that the bedroom door was open and a tall older man with salt and pepper hair and her mother's dark eyes whom Van now knew without a doubt was her grandfather was standing there with Ash beside him and they looked like they'd been there a while. Van did not want to know why Ash was here of all places and he didn't look surprised to see her either. She bit down her lips to keep them from trembling. She was filled with anger and hatred at the sight of her grandfather. Now that Van knew he has no love for her or her brother, she loathe him.
"You..." She made sure to induce enough vehemence in that one word. "YOU killed my mother!" She accused. "She was coming home to us, her family, when she had that accident do you have any idea how that feels?" she glared at him. "And you’re the reason my father's dead too, you could've saved him but you didn't, you let him die because you couldn't accept him as the man my mother loved." if they'd helped, if she'd known about them sooner she wouldn’t have been a victim of Dominic’s misguided revenge scheme.
She sobbed.
"You ruined our lives. I hope you're happy after all my brother and I mean nothing to you people."
After that she stormed passed them and didn't stop even when her grandmother called after her.