Adultery Dad's Enemy Made My Mom Heartless (COMPLETED!!)

[thoristhanos]

UPDATE - 3 

THE DISCOVERY 

The morning after felt like walking through fog that refused to lift. I woke with the same images still looping behind my eyelids—the green saree slipping, the missing hook, the lipstick smeared across her chin like proof of someone else’s mouth on hers. Rohan’s small voice drifted from the kitchen, asking for cereal, but I couldn’t bring myself to answer. Instead I stayed in bed, staring at the ceiling while the knot in my stomach tightened and twisted into something new: an uncomfortable, guilty excitement that made my skin feel too warm.



Two days later I told myself I was only curious. That was all. Curiosity. Nothing more. The word sat in my mind like a shield, thin and flimsy, while the real feeling underneath kept pushing upward—a sick, electric thrill at the possibility that my mother might actually be having an affair with someone. I hated the feeling even as it spread through me, making my fingers tingle and my breath come shorter. I wanted to know. I didn’t want to know. Both truths existed at once, pressing against each other until my chest ached.



She was in the bathroom when I stepped into her room. The shower was running, steam curling under the door, and the soft sound of water against tile gave me a narrow window. Her phone lay on the nightstand exactly where she always left it. I picked it up with hands that felt too large, too obvious. The screen lit up asking for a passcode. My stomach dropped. She had never used a lock before. The phone had always opened straight to her messages, her photos, her calendar—everything visible, nothing hidden. Now there was a six-digit barrier between me and whatever she didn’t want seen. I tried her birthday, my birthday, Rohan’s birthday, my father’s anniversary. None of them worked. The phone stayed dark, and the knot in my stomach pulled tighter.



I set the phone down and turned to her laptop instead. It sat open on the small desk near the window, screen dark but still warm from recent use. I lifted the lid. No password prompt appeared. The desktop loaded immediately—her usual wallpaper of a beach sunset, folders arranged in neat rows. I moved quickly, clicking through documents, downloads, pictures. Nothing unusual. Work spreadsheets, client presentations, old family photos from when my father was still home. I was about to close the lid when I noticed a small, almost invisible folder tucked in the corner of the screen, its name a string of random letters and numbers. I double-clicked. Another password box appeared.



My fingers hovered over the keys. I tried her name. Nothing. My father’s name. Still nothing. My own name, Rohan’s name, every combination of birthdays and anniversaries I could think of. The box stayed closed. Then, without really thinking, I typed the name that had always carried a bitter taste in our house: Akash. To my shock and confusion, the folder opened.



Inside were dozens of files—PDFs, Word documents, scanned contracts. Most of them were labeled with project codes I didn’t recognize. I opened the first one. It was an internal memo from her company, dated three weeks ago. The project manager listed at the bottom was Akash Singh. My father’s greatest enemy had the same name. I told myself it was a coincidence. Mumbai was a big city. There had to be more than one Akash Singh working in sales. But the knot in my stomach refused to loosen.



I kept scrolling. Another document, another project, the same name repeated. Akash Singh. Akash Singh. Akash Singh. The repetition started to feel deliberate, like a name being written over and over until it couldn’t be ignored. I was about to close the folder when I noticed one last file at the very bottom—a single JPEG with no descriptive name, only a string of numbers. I clicked it.



The photo filled the screen.
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It had been taken in a bathroom, probably an office one judging by the marble tiles and the expensive-looking fixtures. My mother stood in the center of the frame, her green saree from the night before pooled on the floor around her feet like discarded wrapping paper. She wore only the matching green sleeveless blouse, and even that was unbuttoned completely, hanging open on either side of her body. Her breasts were fully exposed, heavy and round, the nipples dark against her skin. One of her hands rested on the chest of the man standing behind her—a tall, broad-shouldered figure whose face was half-buried in her hair. His other hand was cupped beneath her left breast, lifting it slightly as though weighing it. Both of them were smiling. Not the polite, camera-ready smiles of family photos, but wide, genuine grins that made them look like a couple who had just shared an intimate joke. The man’s face was turned toward her neck, his lips close enough to kiss the skin there, and my mother’s head was tilted back, exposing the long line of her throat.



I stared at the photo until my eyes burned. The man was younger than my father—maybe in his late thirties, early forties at most. His hair was thick and dark, his jaw sharp, his shoulders broad beneath a crisp white shirt that was also unbuttoned, revealing a chest lightly dusted with hair. He looked strong, confident, the kind of man who knew exactly what he wanted and how to take it. My mother looked smaller beside him, softer, her body curved into his as though she belonged there. The green saree on the floor, the open blouse, the way his hand cradled her breast—it all painted a picture so intimate that I felt like I had walked in on something I was never meant to see.



The sound of the bathroom door opening jolted me back to reality. I slammed the laptop shut, heart hammering so hard I could feel it in my throat. I barely made it out of her room before she stepped into the hallway, a towel wrapped around her body, another around her hair. She didn’t see me. I retreated to my own room, closing the door as quietly as I could, and leaned against it while my mind tried to process what I had just witnessed.



The reality settled over me like a second skin, heavy and inescapable. My mother was having an affair. Not just an affair—a full, physical, intimate relationship with a man who looked young enough to be her younger brother, a man whose name matched my father’s greatest enemy. The photo had been taken recently; the green saree on the floor was the same one she had worn home the night before. The missing hook, the smeared lipstick, the way her breasts had nearly spilled out of the blouse—it all made sense now. She hadn’t been working late. She had been with him. Akash Singh. The same name that appeared on every project document in that hidden folder. The same man whose face I had just seen pressed against her neck while his hand cupped her naked breast.



I sat on the edge of my bed and opened my phone with shaking hands. I searched LinkedIn for “Akash Singh Mumbai sales.” Dozens of profiles appeared. I scrolled through them, my stomach twisting tighter with each passing second. And then I found him. The same face from the photo—sharp jaw, dark hair, confident smile. His profile listed previous employment at my father’s old company, the one he had left four months ago after a bitter falling-out that my father still mentioned whenever he drank too much. Akash Singh had worked there until april. Then the record stopped. No new employer listed. No explanation for the gap. Just a blank space where a career should have been.



I stared at the profile picture until my vision blurred. The man in the photo—the man whose hand had been on my mother’s breast, whose face had been buried in her hair—was the same man my father had once called his greatest professional rival. The same man who had apparently disappeared from corporate records four months ago. And now he was my mother’s lover. The knot in my stomach became a hard, painful lump that sat just beneath my ribs, making it difficult to breathe.



I didn’t cry at first. The humiliation came in waves, each one stronger than the last. Why would she do this? Did she know who he was? Had she chosen him deliberately, knowing the history between him and my father? The thought that she might have sought out my father’s enemy on purpose made my skin crawl. Or had it been an accident—a chance meeting at work that had spiraled into something physical, something secret, something that left her coming home at eleven-thirty with her lipstick on her chin and her blouse unhooked?



I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand and realized I was crying after all. Silent, hot tears that slid down my cheeks and dripped onto my shirt. The image of her in that bathroom photo refused to leave my mind. Her bare breasts, the way his hand had lifted one of them, the smile on both their faces. She had looked happy. Not the polite, tired happiness she showed around the apartment, but a genuine, glowing happiness that made her look years younger. The same woman who had fed me from her own body when I was a baby, who had stayed up nights when I was sick, who had kissed my forehead and told me everything would be okay—that woman was now smiling in a stranger’s arms while her saree lay on the floor and her blouse hung open.



I wanted to confront her. I wanted to demand answers. But the thought of actually saying the words out loud made my throat close up. How could I look her in the eye and ask if she was sleeping with my father’s enemy? How could I ask if she knew who he was, if she had chosen him deliberately, if the affair had started as revenge or simply as desire? The questions circled in my mind, each one more painful than the last, until I couldn’t tell where my anger ended and my humiliation began.



I stayed in my room for a long time, the phone still open to Akash Singh’s LinkedIn profile. The profile picture stared back at me—confident, handsome, the kind of man who could walk into any room and command attention. The kind of man my mother might look at and decide she wanted. The kind of man who could make her come home three hours late with her lipstick smeared and her blouse unbuttoned. The kind of man who could make her smile the way she had smiled in that bathroom photo.



Eventually I closed the phone and lay back on my bed, staring at the ceiling. The knot in my stomach had settled into something permanent, a constant reminder that nothing in our apartment was what it seemed anymore. My mother was having an affair. With my father’s enemy. With a man whose face I would never be able to forget. And I was the only one who knew.


The weight of that knowledge pressed down on me until I could barely breathe. I closed my eyes and tried to picture my mother the way she had been before—proper, reserved, the woman who wore modest blouses and kept her hair pinned in neat twists. But all I could see was the green saree on the bathroom floor, the open blouse, the hand on her breast, the smile on her face. The images played on a loop, relentless, until I finally fell into a restless, uneasy sleep where even my dreams felt like accusations.