Chapter 3 - The Confession
I didn't move. I couldn't. The phone felt like a live grenade in my palm.
"Savannah," I choked out, my voice cracking. "What... what is all of this? The money, the accounts, the dossier on my mother... how long have you been playing me?"
She leaned against the doorframe, looking terrifyingly calm for a woman who had just been dragged across the floor by her hair twenty minutes ago. The split lip was swollen, turning a dark, ugly purple, but her eyes were razor-sharp.
"I wasn't playing you, Christopher," she said quietly, stepping into the kitchen. "I was protecting myself. And eventually, I was trying to protect you from the parasite you call a mother."
"Ninety million dollars?" I whispered, holding up the phone screen just enough for her to see the numbers. "You let me stress over paying the remaining mortgage on this place. You let me act like the big provider while you sat on a fortune?"
"Because the moment a man like you knows his wife is richer than God, things change," she fired back, her tone flashing with sudden, cold steel. "Look at your track record, Christopher. For three years, every time your mother insulted me, choked me out in the kitchen, or burned me with boiling water, you told me to understand her. You told me she had a hard life. If I had told you I was a multi-millionaire while your mother was treating me like an unpaid maid, you would have accused me of looking down on your family. You would have defended her anyway."
The words hit me like physical blows because they were absolute, undeniable truth. I had enabled my mother. I had sacrificed my wife on the altar of filial piety.
"Why didn't you leave?" I asked, my voice breaking. "With ninety million dollars, you could have bought an island."
"Because I loved you," she said, and for a split second, her mask slipped, revealing a crack of raw, agonizing grief. "I thought you were worth fighting for. I thought if I gave you time, you'd open your eyes. But today... today crossed a line. Not just for me. But for our son."
She reached down, gently placing a hand over her seven-month pregnant belly.
"Your mother didn't just push me because she wanted me to make a better dinner, Christopher. She pushed me because she found out about the trust fund I set up exclusively for our baby—a trust fund that explicitly locks her out of any financial access forever. She wanted to cause a miscarriage."
The world tilted. My knees buckled slightly against the kitchen counter.
"A miscarriage?" I whispered in horror. "My mother... she wouldn't..."
"She tried," Savannah whispered, tapping her temple. "It's all in the notes. Every single threat. And now that she's out of this house, do you really think she's going to go quietly?"
Before I could answer, my phone buzzed violently in my hand. An unknown number was calling.
Savannah glanced at the screen. "Answer it on speaker."
May you like
I tapped the screen and hit speaker mode.
"Christopher," my mother’s voice crackled through the phone, sounding less like a crying old woman and more like a predator backed into a corner. "You think you can throw me out like trash? You have no idea what I have on you, on your firm, and on your precious little wife. You’ve got forty-eight hours to give me full access to the apartment keys and a million dollars in cash, or I’ll blow your entire life to kingdom come."
