Chapter 13 - The Wall of Concrete Evidence
Margaret’s jaw dropped,
her face turning an ugly shade of mottled purple.
"You...
you went behind our backs to the county clerk?"
she shrieked,
her mask of maternal authority completely shattering.
"How dare you spy on your own family!
We sheltered you!
We gave you a bloodline legacy!"
"You gave me a front-row seat to your greed,"
I corrected,
my voice cutting through her screeching like a scalpel.
I reached into the briefcase one final time and pulled out the medical files and denial letters.
I tossed them across the table so they landed directly in Paige's lap.
Paige recoiled as if the papers were burning coals.
"What is this?"
she whispered,
refusing to look down.
"That,"
I said, leaning forward until I was towering over both of them,
"is the official oncology report detailing stage-two breast carcinoma.
And right beneath it is the written denial letter from you,
Paige,
monitoring my wife's phone calls and threatening her with my fury if she dared spend three hundred dollars on a biopsy."
Margaret tried to recover her footing,
her voice trembling with desperate denial.
"She was faking it,
Vance!
She wanted your sympathy!
She cut her own hair for attention!"
"She cut her hair and sold it for one hundred and fifty dollars,"
I roared,
the sheer volume of my voice shaking the windows and stopping Margaret dead in her tracks.
"She sold a part of her own body just to find out if she was dying while you two lived like queens in a house I bought with my blood!"
The room plunged into absolute, suffocating silence.
May you like
Neither of them dared to speak.
Neither of them dared to look me in the eye.
