Chapter 6 - The Fine Print
The heavy silence in the kitchen suddenly felt suffocating. Godfrey stopped scrolling on his tablet, his eyes darting frantically between the lawyer in the charcoal suit and the thick blue file resting in my hands. Selina took a sharp step forward, her manicured fingers clutching the edge of the granite island so hard her knuckles turned completely white.
"Damian, what is he talking about?" Selina demanded, her voice rising in pitch as panic began to eclipse her greed. "Asset seizure? What kind of lawyer uses a word like that for a family trust? We're supposed to be consolidating assets, not—not seizing anything!"
I didn't answer right away. I calmly set my coffee mug down on the counter, opened the heavy blue file, and slowly flipped through the crisp, legally binding pages. Every single document was stamped with official state seals and verified by a licensed senior litigator from the city—a real attorney I had hired two days before boarding my flight home, not the fake paralegal Godfrey and Selina had stupidly assumed would just rubber-stamp their theft.
"It’s precisely what it sounds like, Mom," I said, looking up with a cold, level stare that made Godfrey instinctively shrink back. "You see, when my legal counsel reviewed the financial history of this household over the last four years, we discovered a rather glaring legal discrepancy. The funds I sent from Calgary weren't gifts. They were designated conditional remittances specifically earmarked for my wife’s medical care and the agreed-upon mortgage completion of our primary family home—a home, I might remind you, that was purchased under a shared deed containing my name."
"That's absurd!" Selina shrieked, her face flushing an ugly, mottled red. "You gave that money to me! You said yourself in your letters: 'Mom, handle things down here, take care of the house.' A court of law would consider that an unconditional gift!"
"Really?" I raised an eyebrow, sliding one of the printed bank ledger analyses across the granite counter toward her. "Let's see how a court of law views eleven months of zero medical disbursements while my wife was forced to sleep in a storage shed, while simultaneously tracking twenty-four thousand dollars in unauthorized commercial withdrawals used to finance an unpermitted auto shop expansion under Godfrey's sole proprietorship. Oh, and let's not forget the luxury SUV registered under your name, bought entirely with funds wired during the exact week Phedra was denied a cancer treatment consultation because you claimed the account was dry."
Godfrey’s face drained of all color. He slammed his tablet down onto the island. "You—you've been auditing us? You had investigators looking into our accounts?"
"I didn't need private investigators," I replied softly. "Bank records don't lie. Embezzlement, fraud, and financial elder manipulation of an incapacitated dependent—those aren't civil family disputes, Godfrey. Those are felony charges with mandatory minimum prison sentences."
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Selina let out a high-pitched gasp, clutching her chest as if she were about to collapse. "Prison? You're threatening your own mother with prison over a few household adjustments? After everything I sacrificed to raise you?"
"You didn't sacrifice anything, Mom," I said, my voice cutting through her theatrical display like a buzzsaw. "You exploited me. And today, the bill comes due."
