Chapter 7 - The Ledger’s Toll
Mom didn't look at the screen immediately. Instead, her gaze dropped to her hands, her fingers tightly knotting the fabric of her cardigan. The silence in the cramped kitchen was suffocating, broken only by the low hum of an aging refrigerator in the corner.
"You found them," she said softly, her voice devoid of surprise.
The absence of denial hit me harder than an outright argument would have. "You knew," I said, the words tasting like ash in my mouth. "Dad took the blame for an embezzlement charge that Blake committed, and you let him do it. You let him destroy his career, his health, and his self-worth, all so Blake could keep building a clean corporate resume."
Dad appeared in the hallway doorway, leaning heavily against the frame. He looked frail in a faded flannel shirt, his gray hair uncombed, his eyes ringed with deep, exhausted shadows. He must have heard our voices. He didn't look at the tablet either; he just looked at me with an expression of infinite, sorrowful resignation.
"We had to protect him, Natalie," Dad said, his voice cracking slightly. "Blake had a family starting, a future ahead of him. If the federal charges went through, his life was over before it began. I was already at the end of my career. It didn't matter as much for me."
"It didn't matter?" My voice rose, sharp and incredulous. "You spent four years apologizing to us for failing! You let us live in constant financial terror, cutting corners, fighting over grocery bills, while Blake walked around like a corporate savior on stolen money! And then, just yesterday, he tried to steal my life's work using the exact same playbook—forging your signature to bail out his failing company!"
"He's your brother," Mom snapped defensively, her maternal instinct flaring up out of sheer panic. "What were we supposed to do? Call the police on our own flesh and blood? Drag our name through the mud for the whole city to see?"
"You already dragged your name through the mud," I replied, my chest aching with a bitter, cold fury. "You just chose the wrong person to bury."
Dad walked slowly into the kitchen, pulling out a chair and sitting down opposite me. He looked down at the tablet screen, his weathered hands resting quietly on the table. "Blake was desperate, Natalie. He always has been. He wants to be someone important so badly that he loses sight of the line between building something and stealing it. When he came to us last week asking to refinance the house, we couldn't say no. We were afraid of what he might do if he failed."
"And what about me?" I asked, leaning forward. "Were you ever afraid of what you were doing to me?"
Dad didn't answer. He couldn't. His silence was an admission more damning than any argument.
My phone buzzed in my coat pocket. I pulled it out, expecting another corporate ping from Vane & Associates, but it was a direct text message from an unknown local number, accompanied by a single photograph.
May you like
It was a picture of my independent copyright registration files for the Zenith project, sitting open on a desk that wasn't mine—inside Blake’s private office.
Below it was a short message: You think you won the boardroom, Natalie? Check the municipal patent registry before you assume those designs are still yours.
