Justice | Law & Order : SVU

five.

"Mama? What's wrong?" Alejandro cautiously asks walking slowly toward the woman, placing his hands in her outstretched ones when he gets close enough "what were they doing here?"

"Come and sit with me mijo" Nell tells him softly.

"Mama you're scaring me, have you been crying?" He asks and the woman can hear the fear in his voice.

"Yes but good tears, I promise. Now come and sit" Nell says leading him over to the couch and she pulls him down to sit next to her before she wraps an arm around his shoulders.

"Okay, now tell me" His voice cracks as he speaks looking directly into his mothers eyes.

"Mijo... when they ran your DNA through the system they got a match..." she says before he cuts her off his voice stuttering in fear.

"No mama I've never done anything, you have to believe me" he begs.

"No not that kind of match. They got a paternal DNA match, they know who your father is" she explains softly "He was arrested a few months ago in a trafficking case"

"Do you... do you remember him?" Alejandro asks his voice shaking.

"I do" she confirms with a nod.

"Who mama?" Alejandro asks and Nell can see the fear in his chocolate brown eyes.

"Mijo ... I" She starts at a loss for words "I'm sorry" she finally says foreseeing what will happen as soon as she tells him.

"You're scaring me" He tells her.

"His name is Jonathan Drake. We knew him as Johnny D" she sadly admits and almost immediately he pulls away from her.

"Johnny D? No" he says "that can't be right. Mama tell me they're wrong." He begs.

"Alejandro... don't you see? This is good. This just proves you are nothing like him, you are good and kind, everything he isn't" she says moving closer to him again.

"No because you promised. You promised that he hadn't hurt you since long before I was even born. You said it was okay not to be mad at him, to remember how happy I used to be when he'd sit and play toy cars with me, so I'd have good memories even in all that bad" Alejandro cries tears rolling down his now abnormally pale cheeks.

"I know mijo I know what I said. I wanted you to have good memories. Everybody deserves good childhood memories and you only remembered the good about him so no matter how much he hurt me I never wanted to take that from you. But you're grown now and you deserve the truth. The truth is when he'd sit with you and play games it was a message to me. To show how easily he could get close to you, how easily he could hurt you, take you even and there wouldn't be a thing I could do about it." Nell says practically begging the boy before her to understand.

"You should have told me" the boy cries.

"I never wanted you to know the whole truth. You didn't deserve that. But if thats what you want. If you want to know the whole truth... well now you're even older than I was back then so I'll tell you. After he was sure I'd got the message he'd get up and walk over to me and he'd say will you be a good girl now? And then he would take me into another room and he'd rape me, over and over and over again and no matter what he did to me I let him and I never made a sound because I didn't want you to hear that, you didn't need to know what was happening. Then when he was done I'd pull myself together and I'd walk out of that room with a smile on my face and come over to play with you because I didn't want to waste a moment of the short time we were allowed together" Antonella calmly explains to her son, as she speaks more and more tears begin to roll down the boys cheeks.