Chapter 13 - The Twisted Connection
|
"I couldn't say anything!" Gloria cried out, pleading with Daniel. "If I told the truth, the trust fund would have been exposed! The money would have been traced! I had to protect my family!"
"I am your family!" I screamed, the years of quiet composure finally shattering. The pain of the slap was nothing compared to the agony ripping through my chest. "I am your own flesh and blood, and you treated me like garbage! You let Tessa spit on me! You slapped me! You tried to steal my house!"
"I had to drive you away!" Gloria shrieked, grasping desperately for any justification. "I tried to make you leave Daniel! I thought if I made you miserable enough, you would divorce him and disappear again, and my secret would be safe!"
Daniel let out a sound of pure, unadulterated revulsion. It was a guttural noise of a man whose entire reality had just been violently upended.
He had always known he was adopted. Gloria had adopted him as a toddler, shortly before she married Marcus and Tessa's father. Daniel had spent his entire life fiercely loyal to a woman he believed had saved him, a woman he worshipped as a mother.
Now, he realized the terrifying truth. The woman who had "saved" him had ruthlessly sold and abandoned the woman he loved more than life itself.
"You are a monster," Daniel whispered, staring at his adoptive mother with dead eyes. "You are an absolute monster."
Marcus and Tessa were completely silent. The sheer magnitude of the soap opera unfolding in their living room had utterly paralyzed them. Their mother was a fraud, a thief, and a woman who had sold her firstborn child. Their entire lives of privilege had been built on a foundation of filthy, laundered hush money.
Detective Harris picked up the birth certificate from the floor and carefully placed it back into the evidence folder.
"The gig is up, Gloria," the FBI agent stated coldly, stepping forward with the steel handcuffs ready. "You didn't just steal from your son. You committed massive financial fraud using the stolen identity of your own biological daughter. The federal prosecutor is going to have a field day with you."
"No, please!" Gloria begged, scrambling backward in the armchair as the agent approached. "Claire, tell them! I gave you life! You owe me!"
May you like
I looked at the pathetic, weeping woman who shared my DNA.
"You didn't give me life," I said, my voice dropping into a deadly, icy calm. "You gave me away. And I owe you absolutely nothing."
