Chapter 4: Everything Falls Apart
The guests began leaving.
Not loudly. Not dramatically.
Just one by one.
Because no one wants to stay where the truth has been exposed.
Prudence tried to speak again. “You’re blowing this out of proportion—”
I turned to her slowly.
“For five years?” I asked.
She said nothing.
Good.
Gertrude stepped forward, desperation cracking through her voice. “I did what I had to do! You weren’t here! I managed everything!”
“You stole everything,” I corrected.
Her face hardened.
“And what are you going to do?” she snapped. “Throw your own mother out?”
I looked at her for a long moment.
Then I said, “Yes.”
Silence.
Pure. Absolute.
“This house,” I continued, “is in my name. The accounts? Mine. The proof? Already backed up in three places.”
I stepped closer.
“You didn’t just betray me,” I said. “You starved my son.”
That was the line she couldn’t come back from.
Security arrived twenty minutes later.
Not for Sarah.
May you like
Not for Jamie.
For them.
