Chapter 7 - The Anatomy of a Fire
Brooke blinked, caught completely off-guard. The predatory gleam in her eyes shattered, replaced by an uncomfortable, jittery mask.
“Maya… why bring that up now? I told you, I was sick with envy—”
“Do you remember what the temperature was that night?” I asked, leaning back against my chair, twirling the Montblanc pen between my fingers. “It was fourteen degrees. The wind was howling off the harbor. I had spent seven months working thirty-two hours a week at the Shell station, on top of forty hours at the diner, to buy those five computer architecture textbooks.”
“Maya, please, that was nine years ago—”
“You laughed,” I continued, my voice steady, conversational, and lethal. “You took a pair of kitchen shears and cut the spines so the pages would catch fire faster. And when I dropped to my knees on the gravel to pull out the burning leaves of my operating systems manual, Dad didn't just slap me. Do you remember what he used?”
Brooke went pale. Her lips parted, but no sound emerged.
“He used his heavy leather work belt with the brass buckle,” I said softly. “He struck me across the shoulders four times. He called me an arrogant, ungrateful freak who thought she was better than her family. And Mom stood on the back porch with a cup of chamomile tea, watching the brass buckle cut into my coat, and said, *‘Stop playing the victim, Maya. Your sister is getting married next year, and you’re wasting money on useless paper.’*”
A heavy, suffocating silence dropped over the sunlit penthouse. The city buzzed far below us, indifferent to the poison in the room.
“I almost froze to death that night, Brooke,” I whispered. “I slept in the laundry room of an apartment complex three miles away until the super chased me out with a broom at dawn.”
Brooke swallowed hard. A cold sweat was visibly forming along her hairline.
“I… I’m sorry,” she stammered, pulling her knit sweater tighter around herself. “We were terrible. Dad was abusive to all of us. But that’s in the past! We’re blood, Maya! You have so much now… look around this place! What is three hundred thousand dollars to you? It’s pocket change! Why are you torturing me with old memories when Mom is dying?”
“Because,” I smiled, setting the pen down on the pristine table with a crisp click, “Mom isn't dying.”
Brooke froze. Every muscle in her face locked into rigid paralysis.
“What… what are you talking about?”
I picked up my iPad and tapped the screen twice. I turned the device toward her.
Displayed on the high-resolution display was a live-streamed, high-definition photograph taken thirty minutes ago in Boca Raton, Florida.
Sitting poolside at an upscale country club was my mother, Eleanor Vance. She was sipping a frozen margarita, wearing designer sunglasses, laughing uproariously while a cabana boy adjusted her yellow umbrella. Next to her, looking tan, robust, and smoking a fat Cuban cigar, was Richard Vance.
There was no stroke. There was no state facility smelling of bleach. There were no dockyard loan sharks.
There was only a five-million-dollar waterfront villa purchased six months ago under an offshore LLC, financed by the last remnants of Richard’s speculative real estate ventures.
Brooke stared at the screen, all color draining from her skin until she looked like a corpse.
May you like
“You see, Brooke,” I said calmly, “I don’t leave room for zero-point-two percent catastrophic failures. Did you really think you could step onto my property without me running a global forensic background check on every single breath your family has taken since 2015?”
***
