Chapter 4 - The Corporate Slaughter
The weekend passed in a blur of deep cleaning and emotional recalibration. I hired a crew to sanitize the entire downstairs, completely erasing the physical presence of Richard, Brooke, and Vivian. Ethan and I spent Sunday baking cookies and watching movies in bed. For the first time in months, my son slept through the night without waking up crying.
But Monday morning was reserved for business.
At 8:00 AM, Richard’s black Mercedes pulled into the executive parking garage of the Hayes Residential Tower downtown. I watched him from the tinted windows of the tenth-floor boardroom. He looked exhausted, his suit slightly wrinkled, likely having spent the weekend in a cramped hotel room.
When he reached the glass doors of his subsidiary office on the fourth floor, he swiped his key card. It flashed red. He swiped it again. Red.
He banged on the glass, shouting at the receptionist, who simply pointed to the security guard standing nearby. The guard handed Richard a cardboard box containing a few personal desk items—a framed photo of a golf course, a novelty mug, and his favorite pens.
My phone buzzed. It was Marcus.
“He’s in the lobby. He’s demanding to see you.”
“Send him up to Conference Room B,” I replied, smoothing the skirt of my charcoal suit. “Make sure he comes alone.”
When Richard walked into the conference room ten minutes later, he looked completely unhinged. His hair was messy, and his eyes were bloodshot. The confident, cruel man who had sipped bourbon in my living room was entirely gone, replaced by a desperate animal caught in a snare.
“You locked me out,” he hissed, slamming his fists onto the polished mahogany table. “You can’t just seize my company, Amanda!”
“It hasn't been your company for two years, Richard,” I said calmly, remaining seated. I slid a thick stack of papers across the table toward him. “These are the results of the preliminary audit we conducted over the weekend. You didn’t just buy Brooke jewelry. You siphoned off nearly two hundred thousand dollars to pay for the down payment on a townhouse in Vivian’s name.”
Richard froze, his eyes scanning the top page of the audit. The numbers were highlighted in bright, damning yellow.
“Amanda, please,” he choked out, his voice cracking. The sudden shift from anger to begging was pathetic. “I have a new baby. Brooke doesn’t work. My mother relies on me. If you press charges, if I go to jail…”
“You should have thought about your mother, your mistress, and your new baby before you decided to treat my son like garbage,” I replied, leaning forward, my voice dropping to a lethal whisper. “Did you really think I wouldn't find out? Did you think you could break my child in my own house and I would just cry about it?”
He sank into a chair, putting his head in his hands. “I was stressed. Mother kept saying Ethan wasn't mine—I mean, not in spirit. She got into my head. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Amanda.”
“Save the apologies for someone who cares.” I gestured to the second folder on the table. “I am offering you a deal, Richard. And it is the only deal you will get.”
He looked up, a glimmer of desperate hope in his eyes. “What deal?”
“You will sign a full relinquishment of your parental rights to Ethan. You will grant me sole physical and legal custody. You will contest nothing in the divorce proceedings. You walk away with the clothes on your back and the meager savings in your personal checking account.”
He stared at me in shock. “And if I refuse? He’s still my son on paper.”
“If you refuse,” I said, tapping the audit report, “Marcus will hand this over to the District Attorney at exactly noon today. You will face multiple counts of corporate fraud and grand larceny. You will go to federal prison. Brooke will likely leave you the moment the money dries up, and Vivian will end up in a state-funded nursing home when we foreclose on the townhouse you illegally purchased for her.”
I leaned back, crossing my arms. “So, what will it be, Richard? Father of the year, or Inmate Number 4059?”
He looked at the papers, his hands trembling—much like Ethan’s had trembled on the marble floor. But unlike my son, Richard deserved every ounce of his terror.
Slowly, defeatedly, he reached into his jacket, pulled out a silver pen, and signed his name on the dotted line. He didn't even read the terms. He just signed away his rights to the boy he had deemed unworthy.
As he stood up to leave, broken and ruined, I called out to him one last time.
“Oh, and Richard?”
May you like
He paused at the door, not turning around.
“Tell Brooke she can keep the diamond pendant. Consider it a severance package.”
