Chapter 4 - Desperate Measures
By midweek, the reality of their situation had fully set in for Martha and Wesley.
With all joint accounts frozen by court order, their credit cards declined, and the police actively investigating M&W Holdings, the parasitic lifestyle they had built on my back collapsed like a house of cards.
I was working from my home office on Thursday evening when the perimeter alarms signaled motion near the lower driveway. I immediately checked the live camera feeds.
A battered red sedan had parked just outside the outer boundary line, off the main road. Stepping out of the passenger side was Martha. But she didn't look like the arrogant, wine-dress-wearing matriarch from Saturday. She was disheveled, wearing an oversized coat, and her face was pale and drawn.
Beside her was Wesley, looking gaunt, his eyes sunken with dark circles.
Instead of yelling at the gate, Martha did something I never thought she was capable of: she walked to the camera, sank to her knees in the cold snow, and folded her hands together in prayer.
The intercom chimed. I pressed the answer button, but left the video feed off on my end.
"Valerie... please," Martha wept, her voice trembling, ragged with desperation. "Please, I’m begging you. Turn on the speaker. Let me talk to you."
I kept my voice devoid of emotion. "You are violating a temporary restraining order, Martha. The police are already on their way."
"Valerie, please wait! Don't hang up!" Wesley screamed, stepping beside his mother and dropping to his knees too. "They're going to indict us! The detective called my lawyer today! Mom will go to prison, Valerie! She’s sixty-five! She won't survive prison!"
"You should have thought about that before you stole four hundred thousand dollars from me, Wesley," I said.
"I didn't steal it for myself! I did it for us!" Wesley lied desperately, his voice cracking. "Mom was in debt! She was going to lose her house! I was just trying to keep my family afloat until my investment firm took off! I was going to pay it back!"
"Your 'investment firm' was a shell company created to hide stolen assets," I countered. "You lied to my face every single day for three years. You looked me in the eye, kissed me, told me you loved me, and then went into my study to steal my dead father’s legacy."
"Valerie, I’m an old woman!" Martha sobbed, pressing her face against the iron bars of the gate, tears streaming down her wrinkled cheeks. "I was wrong! I was arrogant! I thought... I thought because you had so much and I had so little, it wasn't fair! You have this giant house, all this money from your father... and my son was just a servant to you! I wanted him to have what he deserved!"
"He deserved what he worked for," I replied coldly. "Instead, he chose to rob the woman who supported him, housed him, and loved him."
"We’ll give everything back!" Martha offered frantically. "I’ll sell my house! I’ll sell my car! I’ll give you the shop! Just tell the prosecutor to drop the grand larceny charges! Please... I can't go to jail, Valerie! Have mercy!"
I stood in my warm study, watching these two people who had tried to systematically destroy my life, strip me of my home, and emotionally break me until I was left with nothing.
"Mercy is for people who made a mistake," I said into the microphone. "What you two did was a calculated, multi-year predatory campaign against a grieving daughter who trusted you. You didn't care about mercy when you planned to turn me into a squatter in my own father's house."
In the distance, the faint sound of police sirens began to echo up the winding mountain road.
Wesley’s face twisted from desperation into pure, ugly rage. He scrambled to his feet, rushing the gate and slamming his fists against the iron bars.
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"You heartless bitch!" he screamed, his face contorted in hatred. "You never loved me! You just wanted a puppet! I hope you burn in this giant, lonely house all by yourself!"
"I might be alone, Wesley," I said calmly as the blue lights of the police cars swung around the lower curve. "But I will be free. And you will be in a cell."
