“Mother, I need you to look at me and answer a question in front of every single person here,” he announced, his voice carrying clearly to the far end of the ballroom.
Maris turned a sick shade of gray, her hand tightening around her champagne glass until her knuckles whitened.
“Victor, darling, please do not make a scene at my birthday party, as this is completely inappropriate,” she hissed.
“Three years ago, did you or did you not force Catherine and my daughter out of our home?”
The room went completely silent, so still that the air conditioning seemed to roar.
Maris tried to recover her poise, glancing nervously at the watching crowd.
“That poor, confused child is simply imagining things, because Catherine left because she chose to abandon you,” she lied, her voice unsteady.
Annie pressed her face into Victor’s shoulder, crying quietly as she whispered to him.
“Grandma said that if Mom didn’t leave, you would lose your company and your reputation,” she whimpered.
Victor stared at his mother as if she had become a stranger, a woman he had never truly known.
“And the money, Mother?” he demanded, his voice rising.
“Where are the thousands of dollars I have been sending every month for the last three years?”
Maris pressed her lips together, her whole body beginning to shake beneath the weight of his stare.
“I kept the money to protect you from them, Victor, that is all!” she cried out.
“Protect me from what?” Victor shouted, his control finally breaking.
“From a sick, struggling wife and a daughter who is starving to death?”
The murmurs in the ballroom swelled into gasps and shocked whispers, with several guests reaching for their phones to record the scene.
Then a voice cut through the noise, rough and filled with years of buried guilt.
It belonged to Brian Smith, the retired family chauffeur, a man who had served the estate for more than twenty years.
“Mr. Williams,” the old man said, stepping forward with a trembling hand raised.
“I simply cannot keep this secret any longer, no matter what happens to me.”
Maris screamed at him, her face twisting with malice.
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