Chapter 9 - The Severing of the Cord
Vincent sank onto one of the terrace lounge chairs, burying his face in his hands.
The explosive anger had burned itself out, leaving behind only the hollow, pathetic shell of a man who had never grown up.
“What am I supposed to do?” Vincent wept quietly into his palms.
“I have no money.”
“I have no job.”
“I don't know how to do anything that anyone will pay for.”
“The bank owns the house.”
“We have nowhere to go.”
I looked down at my older brother, feeling the final lingering threads of childhood resentment dissolve into pure, sterile indifference.
I pulled a plain white envelope from my jacket and tossed it onto the glass table beside him.
Vincent looked up, his tear-stained eyes widening with sudden, desperate hope.
“Is... is this a check?” he asked, reaching for the envelope with trembling fingers.
“Open it,” I said.
Vincent ripped the envelope open.
Inside was not a check.
It was a one-year commercial residential lease for a modest, two-bedroom garden apartment in Newark, New Jersey.
Attached to the lease was a paid receipt for the first six months of rent, along with a corporate debit card loaded with precisely twelve hundred dollars.
Vincent stared at the papers, his jaw dropping in stunned confusion.
“Newark?” Vincent stammered, looking up at me in disbelief.
“A garden apartment in Newark?”
“I can't live in Newark!”
“What will people think?”
“Where are Mom and Dad supposed to sleep?”
“Mom and Dad will take the larger bedroom,” I answered with total finality.
“You will take the smaller one.”
“The debit card will buy groceries for the first month.”
“After that, the corporate card will be permanently deactivated.”
“What about the seven hundred and forty thousand dollar debt?” Vincent asked, his voice shaking.
“Who owns Sovereign Horizon LLC?”
“Who bought our family home at the courthouse?”
I stepped closer to him, looking straight into his eyes.
“I own Sovereign Horizon LLC, Vincent.”
Vincent froze, his breath catching in his throat.
“You... you bought the house?”
“I bought the mortgage debt from First Horizon Bank at a thirty percent discount through my holding company,” I said.
“The property belongs entirely to me.”
“The keys are in my safe.”
“And next month, a demolition crew will arrive to tear the structure down so the land can be sold to a suburban housing developer.”
Vincent let out a choked gasp of horror.
“You’re tearing down our childhood home?”
“That house was not a home,” I said.
“It was a theater of cruelty, neglect, and financial fraud.”
“I have erased it from the map.”
“And this apartment in Newark is the absolute final act of charity you will ever receive from my hands.”
“If you sign the lease, you and our parents have a roof over your heads tonight.”
“If you refuse it, you can sleep on the sidewalk outside the diner in Fort Lee.”
“The choice is entirely yours.”
Vincent looked at the lease papers, then looked out over the multi-million-dollar terrace of the Manhattan penthouse.
The illusion was dead.
May you like
The kingdom had fallen.
With trembling, humiliated hands, Vincent took the pen from the envelope and signed his name at the bottom of the page.
