Chapter 6 - The Purge
The dining room descended into absolute chaos.
The remaining guests panicked, scraping their chairs back and scrambling toward the front door like rats fleeing a sinking ship. Mr. Harrison paused near me, briefly touching my shoulder.
"I am deeply sorry for what you and your mother went through, Chloe," he said quietly, casting a look of pure contempt at Brandon. "Needless to say, my firm is pulling all prospective funding from your brother's venture effective immediately."
"Thank you, Mr. Harrison," I replied softly.
Vanessa was screaming at the sheriff's deputies as they stepped toward her. "Get your hands off me! Do you know who my father is?! Richard Hayes! He owns Hayes Development!"
"Ma'am, calm down," Deputy Miller commanded sternly, placing a firm hand on her shoulder. "You have twenty minutes to gather your basic personal effects. Anything you do not carry out in one trip will be locked on the premises and handled through civil litigation attorneys."
"Twenty minutes?!" Evelyn, Vanessa’s mother, shrieked from the end of the table. "I have five suitcases of designer clothes in the master bedroom! I need time!"
"You have nineteen minutes now, ma'am," the second deputy replied impassively, pulling out a timer on his wrist.
Vanessa whipped around, her eyes wild, glaring at me with pure, unadulterated hatred. She looked like a feral animal backed into a corner.
"You think you won, Chloe?!" she shrieked, her voice echoing off the vaulted ceilings. "You think you can just kick us out and live happily ever after with that brainless, pathetic old woman?! She’s nothing! She's a servant! She belongs in the trash!"
SLAM.
The kitchen door swung wide open.
My mother stepped out into the dining room. She was no longer hunching her shoulders. She was no longer trembling. She stood tall, her eyes clear, wiping her blood-stained wrist with a clean white cloth I had given her earlier.
She walked slowly toward Vanessa, stopping just two feet away from her.
For a second, Vanessa flinched, expecting my mother to yell, to hit her back, or to cry.
Instead, my mother looked down at Vanessa’s silver gown, then looked up into her panicked eyes with a look of profound, cold pity.
"In all the months you forced me to scrub these floors, Vanessa," my mother said, her voice quiet, steady, and terrifyingly calm, "I realized something very sad about you."
Vanessa blinked, her chest heaving. "What?"
"You had to make me feel like a servant," Mom said clearly, "because deep down inside, you knew you could never be a real lady. You bought expensive things with money that wasn't yours, in a house that wasn't yours, trying to buy the class that you were born without."
The deputies turned their heads to hide their smirks. Arthur Vance raised an eyebrow in silent appreciation.
May you like
Vanessa’s mouth opened and closed, but no words came out. She was utterly, completely paralyzed by the quiet dignity of the woman she had spent two years abusing.
"Now," my mother said, pointing a steady finger toward the front doors. "Get out of my daughter's house."
