Chapter Twenty-One #2
This was the first time I laughed—really laughed—since the very same night we were watching in the video.
But instead of all the trauma and the pain from that night, just for a minute, we got to indulge in how happy I was for the first time in ten years.
You could see it in my eyes from every angle that I had gotten back something I lost—hope.
As commanded, I queued up the video from the eighth cameraman. It actually would be nice to get some shots of the cooks preparing the feast. Even better if there was video of the cake being born.
I could ask them to speed through these scenes, I thought as we watched the camera leave the ballroom and moved down the hall to the kitchen. Watch the cake go from plain to decorated in fast-motion, and then—
“—can’t fucking stand all this playing nice and smiling through.”
Courtney, the cameraman, and I jerked to a stop as a loud voice came through the speakers.
“That wrinkled old bitch set us up and stole our money,” growled a familiar voice.
“You and Dad had to sell the house. Everything you saved for retirement is gone. It’s not right that Omma gets to drift away on a bed of goose feathers while you’re clipping coupons and cutting Dad’s gout medicine in half to make it stretch farther! ”
“Of course it’s not right,” Marsha Spencer hissed. “But what can we do about it?”
The naughty cameraman stuck to the wall, slowly moving closer, not away, from the alcove their voices were coming from.
“I’ll tell you what I want to do about it,” Micah snarled. “I want to grab a knife, go upstairs, and stab that witch in the heart—”
The video abruptly cut out. In a blink, the picture was back and the camera guy was filming in the kitchens, getting a close-up of the making of the strawberry tartlets like nothing ever happened.
Courtney and I gaped at each other, eyes wide.
“Babe,” she rasped, the color draining from her face. “I think I found your psychopath.”
“Ladies.”
We screamed, whirling around as Micah walked in carrying his coat over his arm.
“Whoa,” he crowed, smiling that sweet, devilish smile. “I know the wind messed up my hair, but I don’t look that bad. No need to scream.”
“What are you doing here?” I blurted. “You’re supposed to be at work.”
“That’s where I was headed when my assistant called and said my client canceled the meeting.” He tossed his coat over the bar. “So I came back to be with my hot-ass wife.”
We stared at him.
“What?” Micah looked down, inspecting his clothes. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
Courtney said nothing. She just scrolled back the video, and hit play.
Micah’s hissed threats hit the air... and his grin melted away.
His blank expression settled into stone. “Baby, I know what it sounds like but—”
“But what, Micah?” I shot up and nearly tipped over. I did have too much to drink. “What can you possibly be about to say next that will make up for the fact that you lied to my fucking face, and you still kept lying after I bared my soul to you!”
“Baby, I—”
“Don’t baby me,” I blared. “You told me that you found out weeks ago that my mother had nothing to do with you and your parents getting conned out of your money, but if that was true, why were you cursing her out and wishing you could kill her the exact way she was killed long after she was exonerated?”
Micah flicked between me and Courtney. I couldn’t begin to guess what he was thinking.
Sighing, his lips parted—
“And don’t you dare open your mouth and lie to me again,” I hissed. “If you do, I’m gone. I’m packing my shit and I’m leaving.”
“Okay, okay,” he said, holding up his hands.
“No lies. No omissions. No half-truths. I did track down a man in Atlantic City who was scammed by the same con artist. He told me the conman worked by finding an in with a family member or friend, but what I left out is that the family member is part of the scam. They do it... for a cut of the money.”
“A cut... of the money...” My alcohol-laden brain stalled.
Courtney wasn’t so speechless. “Hold on, you’re saying Omma introduced that conman to your parents knowing what he’d do? She was in on the whole thing so that she could steal from you too?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
Courtney gaped at him. “And she called me a trashy slut!”
“But—but how could she do that?” I croaked. “Why would she do that?”
Micah tossed his head, crossing to the window. “My family isn’t like the others around here. We lived paycheck to paycheck. I only got into Titan Prep on scholarship. Same for Columbia.
“When everything with the buyout got nasty, my coping habits got worse,” he said.
“I was drunk every night and hungover every morning. I told you that after Alex, Rhodes, and I gave in and took the money, I gave it all to my parents, but they didn’t know what to do with that kind of money either.
They just stuck it in a savings account and ignored it. ”
“They should’ve invested it,” Courtney piped up. “Diversified portfolios. Property. 529s for the grandkids. You don’t want that kind of money just sitting in a savings account.”
He threw out his hands, his lips twisted in a mirthless grin.
“That’s exactly what everyone—literally all of our new rich friends—said.
Especially, my new mother-in-law. She never missed a chance to chide them for being clueless, new-money boneheads that didn’t know how to handle their money properly.
But she really upped the pressure after Lily was born.
“Being the out-of-line, overstepping prude Omma was.” Micah spoke through gritted teeth.
“She had Lily DNA tested without our knowledge. She found out I’m Lily’s bio father, and she brought that test to my parents—laying it on even thicker that if our unnatural arrangement ever broke up, I’d be the one legally on the hook for providing for Lily’s future.
“With that in their heads, my folks gave in,” he breezed—his nonchalant voice not matching the look in his eyes. “They took the contact info of the great financial advisor she knew, and that was that.” He snapped his fingers. “All the money was gone.”
A pregnant pause birthed a litter of awkward silences as I tried to reconcile the mother I knew with the manipulative monster he was describing.
“Is that why you suspected her from the start?” Courtney asked. “Because she was so pushy—even to the point of a DNA test.”
“I didn’t suspect her at all,” Micah said, surprising us.
“Omma and my parents never had these conversations in front of me. I didn’t have a clue.
Remember, we were still living in New York then.
It wasn’t until a year after the conman got away with all the money that my parents finally told me the full story of how they were steered into their path.
“I knew immediately Omma wasn’t innocent.
Just like you said, Thorne, she was too pushy.
She played too hard on my parents’ insecurities, and then brought her own granddaughter into it.
” He snorted. “I don’t know what her cut was, but any percentage of seven billion dollars is a lot of money. She just couldn’t let it go.”
“What happened when you confronted Omma?” asked Courtney.
They were doing all the talking, because I couldn’t get a word out.
“She denied it, of course. She even burst into tears—oh so wounded that I could accuse her of such a thing.” His fists balled.
Micah was still angry—even then. “But she did feel terrible for trusting the wrong person. She said she couldn’t forgive herself for being taken in by him too, and even more so that her relationship with her family was now in jeopardy.
Her solution to make it all up to us was to sign over the manor. ”
“Sign it over?” Courtney repeated. “Just like that, she gave you her home?”
Nodding, he looked to me. “Sorry, Sue, but that was another thing I lied about. We didn’t buy the manor from Omma to help her pay her medical bills. She transferred ownership to us and we had to take it. We just couldn’t afford living in New York anymore.”
“Wow.” Courtney dropped back on her heels. “I guess that was nice of her to—”
“It wasn’t,” Micah sliced in, eyes narrowing.
“She did not give us that fucking manor to be nice. As always, we were too na?ve and too late to figure out her real goal. After we moved in, she refused to move out. Just like that, she had her hooks in all of us—trying to run our lives, and most of all, trying to run Lily’s.
It wasn’t enough that she fucked up Sue— No offense, baby.
“She was trying to ruin Lily’s childhood too.
” He clicked his tongue, turning his glare onto the horizon.
“Some days I wondered if the con was ever about the money at all. I think she was just a lonely, sour old woman who didn’t know how to have real relationships with people, so instead she schemed to make them dependent on her. ”
Courtney slowly turned to me, worry lighting in her eyes.
It took me a minute, but I found my voice. “That’s a sad story, Micah, for all of us, but nowhere in there did I hear proof that you didn’t kill my mother.”
“What? Of course you did!” He advanced on me.
“Sue, why would I kill Omma? She was already dying! I wanted her out of my life, my daughter’s life, and my marriage, and the cancer was taking care of that for me!
What would killing her have accomplished, because it sure as hell wouldn’t have gotten my money back. ”
“Maybe it would’ve.” I faced him head-on, chin hard and set. “Maybe you got tired of waiting and you wanted to trigger a little thing called an inheritance. All the money Omma had stashed would go to me, and you’d get it by getting custody of Lily and claiming every cent as child support.”
“That’s ridiculous,” he deadpanned. “Omma very loudly announced that she was cutting you out of her will. You wouldn’t have inherited my money. I wouldn’t have gotten any child support.”