Chapter 4 - The Blood Stained Debt
The sight of the blood on the paper sent a shockwave through the conference room.
My mother let out a strangled gasp, clutching her chest, while Natalie finally stopped looking at her phone. She stared at her son, her face drained of all color.
“Owen?” Natalie whispered, her voice shaking. “What is that?”
I reached out and pulled the crumpled paper toward me. It wasn’t just a note. It was a betting ledger. Lines of sports wagers, illegal poker debts, and catastrophic losses.
The total debt was staggering. $150,000.
“You’ve been gambling?” my father roared, pushing his chair back so violently it tipped over and crashed against the wall. “You threw away everything for cards? I bought you tutors! I bought you a car!”
“You bought me things so you could pretend I was perfect!” Owen screamed back, tears streaming down his face. “You never cared about me! You only cared about how I looked to your country club friends! You told me I was better than Lily, but I was failing everything! I just wanted to win at something!”
The room descended into chaos. My father was shouting, my mother was sobbing, and the principal was frantically typing on her phone, likely calling school security.
But I sat perfectly still.
I looked at the ledger again. The dates. The amounts. Something was horribly wrong.
The bets were massive. Ten thousand dollars on a single college football game. Twenty thousand on a horse race.
Owen was a teenager. No underground bookie would extend a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in credit to a high school junior. Not unless there was a guarantor. Not unless someone much older, and much more desperate, was placing the bets through him.
I slowly lifted my head and looked directly at my sister.
Natalie wasn’t looking at Owen anymore. She was staring at the ledger in my hands, her breath coming in shallow, panicked gasps.
“It’s not him, is it?” I asked, my voice cutting through the shouting like a knife.
The room went dead silent.
“Claire, please,” Natalie whispered, her eyes wide with terror.
“You used your own son,” I said, feeling physically sick. The pieces were finally locking into place. “You’re the one with the gambling problem, Nat. You drained Lily’s trust fund to pay your debts. And when the trust money ran out, the bookies came for you. So you made your teenage son act as the bagman.”
My mother let out a horrific wail and buried her face in her hands. She knew. They all knew.
“You let Owen steal the charity money to cover your weekly interest payment,” I continued, my voice gaining strength. “And when the school noticed it was missing, you all sat in my dining room and told me to sacrifice Lily to protect him. To protect YOU.”
“We had to!” my father shouted, desperate to regain control. “If those people didn’t get their money, they were going to hurt Natalie! What were we supposed to do, Claire? Let your sister die?”
I stood up. I didn’t shout. I didn’t cry. I had never felt more powerful in my entire life.
“You were supposed to be parents,” I said coldly. “But you chose your favorite child, just like you always do. Even when she’s a criminal.”
I turned to my attorney. “Mr. Harrison, call the police. I want to press charges for forgery, grand larceny, and the theft of my daughter’s trust.”
“Claire, wait!” Natalie shrieked, lunging across the table and grabbing my wrist. “Don’t do this! If you call the cops, my husband will find out! Greg doesn’t know! He’ll leave me!”
At that exact moment, the heavy oak doors of the conference room swung violently open.
Standing in the doorway was Greg, Natalie’s husband. He looked exhausted, his suit disheveled.
And in his hand, he was clutching a vintage pearl necklace.
“He already knows, Natalie,” Greg said, his voice hollow. He walked toward the table and dropped the pearls onto the wood. They hit with a heavy, final clatter.
May you like
I gasped. It was my grandmother’s necklace. The one that disappeared ten years ago.
“I found this hidden in the lining of her suitcase,” Greg said, looking at me with profound sorrow. “She was packing to leave the country, Claire. But she isn't running from the bookies. She's running from him.”
