Chapter 4 - The Shadow of the Past
Nadine sank slowly into the wooden chair behind her, her legs apparently no longer able to support her weight. The cream jacket slipped from her lap, pooling onto the floor like a discarded rag. For the first time since I had met her eight years ago at a stuffy family dinner where she spent twenty minutes explaining why my college degree in culinary arts wasn't 'proper' enough for her son, she looked small. Fragile, even.
"How long?" she whispered, staring blankly at the polished floorboards. Her voice sounded hollow, stripped of all its usual booming arrogance. "How long did you know about the... about the money?"
"About the debt? About six months," I said, handing the signed contract back to Colby with a subtle nod, signaling him to take it downstairs. Colby gave me a tight, supportive smile and slipped out through the kitchen doors, leaving us alone in the cavernous, quiet dining room.
I pulled out the chair opposite Nadine and sat down, resting my elbows on the table. The distance between us felt less like a battlefield now and more like a post-mortem.
"Six months?" Nadine repeated, her head snapping up, her eyes burning with a sudden, desperate flash of resentment. "And you said nothing? You let him sink deeper and deeper, you let him juggle those accounts, you let my family—our entire reputation—hang by a thread while you sat back and plotted your little escape?"
"Plotted?" I let out a quiet, humorless scoff. "Nadine, the day after we got married, you cornered me in the kitchen of our first apartment and told me that a good wife’s primary job is to manage her husband's family obligations without complaining. You spent eight years treating me like an unpaid caterer and a convenient ATM for your social club. Every time I tried to tell Bryce to put limits on your spending, you cried, you played the victim, and he guilted me into backing down because 'she's my mother, Delaney, she's all I have left.'"
Nadine flinched, her jaw tightening as she tried to salvage some shred of dignity. "A mother's place in her son's life is sacred—"
"A mother's place isn't to live off her son's fraudulent earnings while looking down her nose at the woman who actually keeps the roof over their heads," I interrupted, my voice sharp enough to cut glass. "You didn't care where the money came from, Nadine. As long as the wine was poured, the oysters were fresh, and your friends applauded your generosity, you never once asked Bryce how he afforded any of it."
She opened her mouth to retort, to throw another insult or accusation, but the words died in her throat. She knew it was true. Every luxury she had paraded around Asheville for the past decade—the designer clothes, the charity sponsorships, the endless restaurant tabs—had been built on a foundation of shifting sand and illegal transfers.
"What are we going to do?" she whispered after a long, agonizing pause, the plural pronoun slipping out unconsciously. For the first time, she wasn't addressing me as an inferior; she was looking at me as the only person in the room with any power left.
"We aren't going to do anything," I said calmly, standing up from the table. "You are going to call your friends, tell them your credit card didn't go through, and figure out how to Venmo my manager twenty-six thousand, four hundred and twelve dollars before we close our books for the night. Or I can let Colby hand that itemized receipt and the federal default notice directly to the local newspaper reporter who happens to eat here every Tuesday."
Nadine stared at me, horror dawning in her eyes. "You wouldn't... that would destroy our name. The Frost family has lived in Biltmore Forest for three generations—"
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"And the Frost family is about to be the lead story on the local evening news for white-collar embezzlement," I finished, smoothing down the front of my apron. "Choose your ending, Nadine. You have twenty minutes before the dinner shift starts and the doors open again."
I turned my back on her and walked toward the kitchen, leaving her sitting alone in the gathering shadows of the empty dining room, clutching her silent phone like a drowning woman holding onto a stone.
