Chapter 3 - The Matriarch’s ShadowThe mention of my mother hit me like a physical blow. I felt the floor tilt beneath me. "My mother? Clara, my mother lives in the city, but she’s been at her retreat in the mountains for weeks. Why would she be here? Why would she do this?"
Clara was hyperventilating now, her hands clutching her stomach as the baby kicked violently, as if reacting to the trauma. "She wasn't alone. She had help. She... she wanted me to sign papers. She said you had been investigated for embezzlement at the firm, and that if I didn't sign over our home and your life insurance policy to her, she’d turn the evidence over to the authorities."
My mind raced. Embezzlement? I hadn't been investigated for anything. I was a senior partner. I was the golden boy of the firm.
"She was lying, Clara! She’s been trying to get between us for years because she thinks I’m her personal retirement fund. Why didn't you call me?"
"Because she showed me photos, Ethan!" Clara sobbed, pulling her silk gown aside to reveal a horrific, jagged laceration on her shoulder, still oozing. "She had photos of you with a woman. She made it look so real. She said you were leaving me once the baby was born. She said she was the only one who could save me. But then she brought that man—that heavy-set man—to force me to sign the papers. I fought back. I smashed the frame to get the glass... I used it to defend myself."
The pieces fell into place with sickening clarity. The backward nightgown—she hadn't put it on wrong; she had been forced to dress in a hurry, or perhaps she had been stripped and shoved into it by someone who didn't care how it fit. The broken photo wasn't an argument; it was her shield.
"Where is she now?" I asked, my blood boiling with a fury I had never felt.
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"She left," Clara whispered. "She told me I had one hour to sign the papers or she’d come back with people who wouldn't just use their hands."
I looked at my watch. It had been forty minutes.
