Chapter 6
A group of reporters with cameras came rushing over.
Right behind them were several police officers.
At the center of it all was Vivien, carrying two stuffed bags full of documents.
The second Logan, Sienna, and Mom spotted her, their faces dropped.
“Vivien,” Logan said stiffly, “what are you doing here?”
Vivien smiled, calm as ever. Not a trace of anger showed on her face.
“Mom, Logan, Sienna—since we’re all here, let’s let everyone decide who’s actually in the wrong.”
She started pulling documents from the bags and handing them out to the crowd.
Someone immediately gasped.
“Two thousand five hundred dollars. He gave her twenty-five hundred dollars every single month. Damn, that’s more than my whole paycheck.”
The murmur in the crowd shifted. The tone morphed from righteous outrage to sharp, confused whispers.
Vivien didn’t stop.
She moved through the onlookers with the calm precision of a dealer handing out cards at a casino. She passed out stapled packets, bank statements, medical records, and printed text logs.
“Page three,” Vivien said, her voice carrying clearly over my mother’s fading sobs. “You’ll see the bank transfers on the first of every month for the last seven years. Twenty-five hundred dollars, directly from Cashin’s account to hers.”
A woman in a gray trench coat—one of the people who had been livestreaming—zoomed her camera in on the paper in her hand.
“Wait, it says here she spent almost all of it at a liquor store that sells lotto tickets. Three hundred dollars a week on scratch-offs.”
“Look at page five!” a man yelled.
He glared at Sienna. “Medical report from County General. Patient slipped on wet pavement at 442 Elm Street. That’s not Cashin’s address.”
“No, it’s not,” Vivien said coolly, stepping up to stand beside me.
She reached out and gently wiped a streak of blood from my jaw where I’d been hit.
“That is Sienna’s address. Mom broke her leg walking Sienna’s golden retriever in a thunderstorm because Sienna didn’t want to ruin her suede boots. Cashin paid the four-thousand-dollar out-of-pocket medical bill. The receipt is on page six.”
Sienna’s perfectly practiced tears stopped.
Her face drained of color.
“That—that’s forged. You made that up.”
“It’s subpoenaed,” a crisp voice interrupted.
A woman in a sharp blazer stepped forward from the group of reporters.
“I’m Sarah Jenkins, investigative journalist with Channel 7. Vivien reached out to us last night with a tip about elder financial abuse. We ran the hospital records this morning. They’re completely authentic.”
Logan panicked. His eyes darted around like a trapped rat.
“So what? He’s rich. He has a big house. Mom gave us that money because he doesn’t need it. He’s just being a greedy bastard trying to steal our inheritance.”
“Inheritance?” one of the police officers said, stepping forward. His hand rested casually on his duty belt. “Sir, your mother is still alive. It was a lottery winning. And according to this sworn affidavit, she distributed one million dollars to you and your sister yesterday while demanding that your brother continue to pay for her housing, food, and medical care.”
The crowd erupted.
The sympathy that had been directed at my family just minutes ago boomeranged violently in the other direction.
“A million dollars?”
The man who had punched me gasped. He looked at his own knuckles in horror, then back at me.
“Buddy, I am so sorry. They said you were starving her.”
I spat a mouthful of metallic-tasting saliva onto the concrete.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, my voice eerily calm.
Then I looked down at my mother.
The theatrical agony had vanished from her face.
All that remained was terror.