Chapter 3 - Restitution
By midnight, the mansion was a tomb. The wealthy guests had fled in a flurry of whispers and panicked text messages, leaving behind half-eaten plates of gourmet food and expensive bottles of wine.
I had moved Sarah and Jamie into the master bedroom—the grand suite with the plush velvet mattress and the heated floors that my mother had arrogantly claimed as her own. I ran a warm bath for my wife, washed the dirt from my son's hands, and ordered a massive spread of fresh, healthy food from a twenty-four-hour delivery service.
As Jamie ate frantically, his little face covered in chicken broth, Sarah sat on the edge of the bed, wrapped in a thick, clean robe. The silence between us was heavy, broken only by the sound of our son's silverware.
"Why didn't you tell me, Sarah?" I asked softly, sitting on the floor across from her. "The letters... the short phone calls... why didn't you tell me they took the money?"
Sarah hid her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking as the tears finally came. "They intercepted everything, Leo. The moment you left, your mother told me that if I ever tried to contact your base or complain to you, she would use her connections to have me declared an unfit mother. She said she’d take Jamie away from me and ensure you never saw him again. I had no money, no family left to turn to. I was trapped."
A brutal, suffocating guilt washed over me. I had thought I was being a provider by sending money, but by trusting the wrong blood, I had handed my family over to the monsters.
"It's over now," I whispered, kissing her worn hands. "I promise you, they will pay back every single cent they stole from you. And more."
Leaving Sarah and Jamie to rest, I walked down the grand marble staircase. Gertrude and Prudence were sitting in the living room, surrounded by luxury, looking like two criminals awaiting a sentencing hearing.
"Leo," Gertrude said, her voice trembling as she tried to adopt a maternal tone. "We are family. Surely we can reach an understanding. We spent the money on the house, on maintaining our social standing so that when you returned—"
"Where is the deed to the property?" I interrupted, standing at the head of the room.
Gertrude hesitated. "It's... it's in the family trust account. Under my name."
I pulled a legal notepad from the desk, tossed it onto the coffee table in front of her, along with a pen.
"You are going to write a full confession," I said flatly. "You will document every single dollar you withheld from Sarah. You will document the child endangerment, the emotional abuse, and the theft of my corporate bank transfers. And tomorrow morning, you will sign this house over to Sarah's name entirely."
"And if we don't?" Prudence hissed, her arrogance briefly flaring up. "You can't prove we starved her! She chose to live out there!"
I pulled out my phone and held it up. On the screen was the high-definition security footage from the service kitchen camera I had installed via my phone app before I left five years ago—a camera they had completely forgotten about. The footage clearly showed Prudence locking the back door from the inside, laughing as Jamie cried on the porch in the rain.
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"I have five years of digital logs, Prudence," I said, a dark smile spreading across my face. "If you don't sign that paper, you won't just be homeless by tomorrow afternoon. You'll be wearing an orange jumpsuit for the next ten years. Write."
With trembling hands, Gertrude picked up the pen.
