Chapter 3 - The Hooks Sink Deep
If a bomb had gone off in the living room, the reaction couldn't have been more explosive.
The moment the words "one million dollars" left my lips, the atmosphere in the room shifted instantly. All the righteous indignation, the defensive screaming, and the theatrical panic evaporated as if they had never existed. Theresa’s hands dropped from her face, her eyes locking onto my phone screen with a predatory, starving intensity that completely erased any resemblance of maternal warmth. Brianna physically lunged forward, her posture shifting from defensive hostility to sycophantic adoration in a split second.
"One... one million dollars?" Theresa stammered, her voice suddenly high, sweet, and trembling with fake emotion. She rushed forward, abandoning her previous stance, and tried to grab my free hand. "Oh, my sweet boy! Thank God! I knew the Lord was protecting you! All those sleepless nights I spent praying for your safety in that freezing Canadian hellhole—they finally paid off!"
"Don't touch me, Mom," I said coldly, stepping back just enough to keep her claw-like hands away.
Theresa didn't care about the cold shoulder; her eyes were completely blinded by the blinding flash of seven figures. "Oh, Nathan, you have to understand! When you sent us all that money over the years, we barely scraped by! Inflation is terrible! Property taxes doubled! We had to remodel the kitchen just to keep the house from falling apart! But now... with a million dollars..."
"With a million dollars, everything changes," Brianna chimed in, rushing over to my other side, her face twisted into a sickening, sugary smile that failed to reach her cold, calculating eyes. She threw her arm around my shoulder, leaning in close as if we had never spent the last ten minutes screaming at each other. "Right, big bro? I mean, think about it! You’ve been working yourself to the bone for years. You deserve to relax! And we’re your family—the ones who stayed behind, kept the lights on, and protected your home turf!"
I looked down at Brianna, keeping my face perfectly neutral. "Protected my home turf? By locking my wife in a storage shed and starving her?"
Brianna rolled her eyes dismissively, waving her hand as if cancer and starvation were minor traffic infractions. "Oh, stop being so dramatic, Nathan! Lucy was acting completely unhinged! She refused to take her medication, she broke expensive household items, and she was bringing total negative energy into the house! Honestly, keeping her out of the main living areas was for everyone's safety, including yours."
"That's right," Theresa chimed in, seamlessly pivoting to ride the wave of the financial windfall. "We had to make hard choices, Nathan. Managing a sick person with no mental stability costs a fortune. But now that you’re a millionaire, we can finally put this ugly chapter behind us. We can put Lucy into a proper long-term care facility—somewhere far away where she can get professional help—and you and I can take that family trip to Europe we always talked about!"
Lucy let out a choked sob against my chest, her frail fingers gripping my shirt so tightly her knuckles turned white.
I gently stroked the stubble on her shaved head, feeling the burning rage inside me threaten to boil over. They were ready to throw my dying wife into a dumpster the second a million dollars flashed before their eyes. Their greed wasn't just a flaw; it was a black hole that swallowed human decency whole.
"A long-term care facility in Europe sounds expensive, Mom," I said smoothly, feeding right into their fantasies. "And a million dollars is a lot of money, but it needs to be managed carefully. Taxes, investments, legal fees... it's complicated."
May you like
"Oh, you don't need to worry about complicated legal fees!" Brianna chirped eagerly, pulling out her phone and tapping rapidly on the screen. "My friend’s uncle is a brilliant corporate financial advisor downtown! He handles accounts for local real estate moguls and tech executives! We can schedule a formal dinner meeting with him tonight—at the high-end steakhouse downtown, my treat! We can sit down, review all the paperwork, and officially consolidate your accounts into a secure family trust managed right here so you don't have to stress about a thing!"
There it is, I thought to myself. The trap was officially baited, sprung, and locked. They weren't just waiting for a handout; they wanted absolute, total legal control over every single penny before the sun went down.
