Chapter 4 - The Demands of the Prodigal
Mom suddenly shoved her plate forward, the silverware rattling sharply. "Enough of this! You invited us here under false pretenses, Marlo! You brought us here to shame us. To throw your money in our faces while you parade your crazy aunt around like she's royalty!"
"Helen, please," Dad muttered, placing a calming hand on her arm, but Mom shook him off violently.
"No, Richard! Look at this place! Look at that chandelier! Look at the art on these walls!" Mom pointed an accusing finger at me. "Do you have any idea what your brother has been going through this past year? Trevor’s tech venture needed funding. He went to three different banks, and they all turned him down because he didn't have collateral. He had to take out a high-interest loan just to keep his office open! We had to remortgage our own home to help him float payroll last month!"
I arched an eyebrow. "Is that so?"
Trevor sat up straighter, sensing an opening. "Yeah, actually, Marlo. It’s been rough. The market is brutal right now. You’re running some kind of digital supply chain firm, right? You obviously have liquid capital. If you really wanted to do something meaningful for Christmas, you could invest in real blood. You could write a check for fifty grand and help your own brother keep his dream alive."
I looked at Trevor for several long seconds. The sheer audacity of it was almost breathtaking. Ten years of silence, three years of ignored phone calls when I was building my business from scratch, and now he was sitting at my dining room table asking for fifty thousand dollars between bites of beef tenderloin.
"What's your current burn rate, Trevor?" I asked.
Trevor blinked. "My what?"
"Your burn rate. What are your monthly operating expenses versus your recurring revenue?"
He cleared his throat, suddenly looking cornered. "Well... it varies. The app is in beta testing, so—"
"You don't have an app in beta testing," I said flatly. "You rented a desk at a shared workspace downtown, spent twelve thousand dollars on branded merchandise and custom stationery, and hired two freelance developers overseas whom you haven't paid in six weeks. You don't have revenue, Trevor. You have an expensive hobby funded by Mom and Dad’s retirement equity."
Trevor’s face drained of color. "How do you know that?"
"Because unlike you, I actually run a logistics and operations infrastructure company," I replied coldly. "I run background and credit evaluations on vendors every single day. When Mom called two weeks ago to casually mention you were 'expanding your tech enterprise,' I had my legal team do a standard five-minute search on your registered LLC. You’re sixty-eight thousand dollars in debt, Trevor. And most of it went to leasing a German sports car you can’t afford to insure."
Dad’s jaw dropped. He whipped around to face his son. "Trevor? You told us that car was provided by an angel investor!"
Trevor shrank back into his chair, sputtering excuses. "Dad, it was about optics! You have to project success to attract investors! Marlo knows that! She’s just being spiteful because she wants to hoard everything for herself!"
Mom was breathing heavily, torn between the sudden revelation of Trevor’s deceit and her desperate urge to protect him. "Even if he made mistakes, Marlo, he’s your brother! Families forgive! Families help each other!"
"Families don't lock their daughters out in forty-degree rain over an unpaid internship," I replied, standing up slowly from my chair. "Families don't pretend a child doesn't exist until they find out she built a twenty-million-dollar company with the woman you cast out as the black sheep."
Dad stood up then, his voice shaking with a mixture of anger and humiliation. "We are your parents, Marlo! You owe us respect! You can't just invite us into your house, parade your wealth, buy your aunt a lakefront property, and treat us like stray dogs!"
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"I didn't treat you like stray dogs, Dad," I said, walking slowly toward the hallway. "If I had treated you like a stray dog, I would have fed you and given you a warm place to sleep when you had nowhere else to go. Just like Roxan did for me."
***
