Chapter 4 - The Cold Truth for Teresa
I walked back down the grand staircase holding a thick manila folder containing the corporate lease documents,
the banking statements,
and the private investigator’s initial report.
Teresa was sitting at the dining room table,
drinking tea from my mother’s vintage porcelain cup,
nibbling on expensive butter biscuits she had found in my pantry.
“Where is my coffee?” Arthur shouted from the living room,
his voice booming through the house.
“Eleanor,
did you hear Arthur?” Teresa scolded,
shaking her head in disapproval.
“You are being remarkably slow today.”
“If you are going to be David’s wife,
you need to learn how to run a household efficiently.”
I walked over to the dining table and dropped the heavy manila folder directly onto her tea saucer,
shattering the delicate porcelain into sharp shards.
Tea spilled across the polished mahogany table,
soaking into Teresa’s cardigan.
“What on earth is wrong with you!” Teresa shrieked,
jumping out of her chair in sheer horror.
“Are you insane?”
Arthur came trotting into the dining room,
his face red with anger.
“What is going on here!” he yelled,
pointing a finger at me.
“You crazy woman,
you ruined Teresa’s tea!”
“Read the documents,
Teresa,” I said,
my voice calm,
flat,
and completely devoid of emotion.
Teresa glared at me,
wiping tea from her sweater,
before reaching down to pull the papers from the wet folder.
“What is this junk?” she muttered,
flipping through the pages with visible disgust.
She stopped at the second page.
Her eyes widened.
The color slowly drained from her face as she read the SoHo lease agreement,
the credit card statements showing thousands of dollars spent on women’s clothing boutiques,
and the transaction receipt for Zao Zero Diamond Boutique.
“What...
what is Chloe Dupont?” Teresa stammered,
her voice suddenly losing its booming authority.
“That is the woman your son is currently living with in Manhattan,” I said,
leaning against the edge of the table.
“He didn’t go to Tokyo,
Teresa.”
“He didn’t get a promotion.”
“He took a sabbatical,
rented a four-million-dollar penthouse using my money,
and bought her a fifteen-thousand-dollar diamond ring this morning.”
“No,
no,
this is a mistake!” Teresa cried,
her hands shaking violently as she held the papers.
“David would never do this!”
“He is a good,
god-fearing Christian boy!”
“He loves his family!”
“He loves his parents!”
“He loves his family so much,” I replied with sharp sarcasm,
“that he dumped the two of you in my house to act as a distraction while he ran off with his mistress.”
“He told you he was going to Tokyo so you wouldn’t look for him in New York.”
Arthur snatched the papers from Teresa’s hand,
his thick glasses sliding down his nose as he scanned the documents.
“This...
this can’t be real,” Arthur mumbled,
his arrogance completely shattered.
“It is entirely real,” I said,
pulling out my phone and playing a recorded voice message from David’s assistant,
confirming his sabbatical and his co-habitation address in SoHo.
Teresa collapsed back into her chair,
staring at the floor in total shock.
“Now,” I said,
May you like
stepping closer to her.
“You have exactly two hours to pack your bags and leave my house.”
