PART 1
“If you spill the water again, I swear I will make you kneel until that child is born!”
I heard my mother’s harsh voice before I even fully entered the living room. She had returned home at noon to retrieve a confidential folder for an upcoming board meeting, and I had not called ahead because I assumed my wife, Daphne, was resting since she was eight months pregnant.
What I saw behind the glass wall took my breath away.
Daphne was kneeling on the cold marble floor, her maternity dress completely soaked and her swollen hands plunged into a basin of ginger water. Facing her, my mother, Rosalind, reclined comfortably in a leather armchair while eating a nut dessert and forcing my wife to wash her feet.
“Squeeze harder,” Rosalind ordered in a cold tone. “You eat with my son’s money, after all.”
Daphne tried to get up, but she lost her balance on the slippery floor. At that moment, my mother raised her foot and kicked her right in the side of her stomach.
I do not remember dropping my briefcase. I only remember the loud crash against the floor, my wife’s sharp scream, and the intense heat of rage rising in my throat.
I crossed the room in two strides and shoved my mother aside. She fell against the basin, getting soaked and looking utterly stunned. Never in my thirty-six years had I raised my voice to her, let alone my hand. But this woman did not seem like the mother I had brought from San Diego to live with us in San Jose. She seemed like a complete stranger.
I knelt beside my trembling wife and noticed her lip was split. “Since when has this been happening?” I asked softly.
“I didn’t want to put you between us,” Daphne whispered through her tears. “You were so happy to have her living here with us…”
Her answer devastated me completely.
For twelve years, Daphne had been by my side ever since we shared cheap tacos in a small rented room near the university campus. She had sold the gold chain her grandmother left her just to help me open a small medical equipment distribution company. She worked as an accountant, a delivery driver, and even a janitor when we could not afford employees. Thanks to her endless sacrifices, that small office became a thriving company that billed millions.
And I, blinded by the guilt of wanting to be a good son, had brought my mother into our home and given her an expense card with five thousand dollars a month.
I went up to her room, packed two large suitcases with her clothes and expensive jewelry, and carried them out onto the sidewalk under the burning afternoon sun.
“From today, you are never coming back inside this house,” I told her firmly.
Rosalind put a hand to her face, first in utter disbelief and then in furious anger. “This house is mine too! Your entire company exists because of me! When your brother Mason arrives, we are going to take away even your last name!”
I closed the iron gate without answering her.
That night, while Daphne slept peacefully under medical supervision, I opened the studio safe in my office.
The safe was completely empty.
Five gold bars, fifty thousand dollars in cash, and the original company incorporation documents had all disappeared without a trace.
Then my phone rang unexpectedly. It was my younger brother, Mason.
“Brother,” Mason said, laughing mockingly on the phone, “we will talk tomorrow about my new official position as CEO.”
I stood there in shock, unable to believe what was about to happen to my family.
