Chapter 3 - The House of Lies
|
I pulled my daughter into my arms. For a second, she stayed rigid, but then she collapsed against my chest, sobbing into my shirt. I held her tight, feeling the sharp angles of her collarbone beneath the thin fabric of her sweater.
"I'm so sorry," I kept repeating into her hair. "I didn't know. I swear to God, Maya, I didn't know."
When she finally pulled away, wiping her face with her sleeve, a hardened, determined look settled in her eyes. It was a look no fifteen-year-old should ever have.
"If she's been taking the money," Maya said, her voice steadying, "where is it going?"
"That is exactly what we are going to find out," I told her. "But first, I need you to tell me everything. How does she treat you at the house?"
Maya took a deep breath. "I don't live in the main house anymore. When I was twelve, she moved me into the unfinished basement. She said the upstairs was for 'paying guests'."
"Paying guests?" I asked, confused.
"She rents out my old room on Airbnb," Maya explained. "And the master bedroom. She lives in the guest room. She makes me clean the bathrooms and change the sheets before I go to school."
My own mother had turned my daughter into an unpaid maid while pocketing my child support.
"What about food?" I asked, dreading the answer.
"She locks the pantry and the fridge," Maya said casually, as if this were normal. "She leaves me a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter for the week. If I want anything else, I have to buy it with the money from the diner."
I felt a murderous rage building inside me. "Maya, I am never leaving you with her again. You're coming back to Dallas with me. Today."
"No," Maya said sharply.
I blinked in surprise. "What?"
May you like
"If you just take me now, she gets away with it," Maya said, her eyes flashing with a dark, calculating fire. "She stole thirty-two thousand dollars from you, Dad. She stole five years of my life. I don't just want to leave. I want her to pay."
I looked at my daughter, realizing she had inherited her mother's fierce sense of justice. "Okay. How do we play this?"
