Chapter 6
Chapter 6: The Confrontation
Isabel saw the look in her husband's eyes and shuddered. She glanced at Rosario, then down at the bowl of cold soup and the piece of leftover bread on the shabby wooden table. She swallowed hard, taking a step forward, trying to salvage the situation.
"Darling, please don't overreact," Isabel used her sweetest, most coaxing tone. "Your mother is comfortable here. It's too loud out there, she wouldn't fit in. I told the chef to bring her some light food."
Gabriel looked at the woman he had called his wife for the past five years. He looked at her as if seeing a hideous monster wearing the skin of an angel for the very first time.
"Comfortable? You call hiding my mother in a dark corner of the kitchen, sitting next to a leaking sink, COMFORTABLE?" His voice roared, echoing so powerfully through the kitchen that the glass cabinets rattled.
The doors opened again. Patricia, Isabel’s sister, appeared behind her. She smoothed her elaborately styled hair, her face arrogant and judgmental.
"Gabriel, please. You are a man of status. Your mother shouldn't be in that environment. Do you have any idea she would probably hold her fish fork in her left hand? We are just trying to avoid an awkward situation for you, to protect the image of the Herrera family."
Hearing those words, Rosario shrank back on her stool, feeling like a sinner. She pulled the edge of her old cardigan down to hide her rough hands.
Gabriel took a long stride toward the two women, forcing them to back up. His eyes were shooting fire.
"The only awkward situation in this house is that two grown women, who leech off my wealth, are conspiring to humiliate an elderly woman, just to protect the hollow, fake image of some wannabe aristocrats!"
Isabel's face went pale with anger and humiliation. She had never been insulted by her husband like this.
"Gabriel! Be careful how you speak to me. I am your wife, the lady of this mansion!"
Gabriel let out a cold, bitter laugh.
"No. You be careful how you treat the woman sitting right there. Do you even know who that woman is? She is the person who washed dishes to buy me my first suit for a job interview. She sold my father's only heirloom to pay my college tuition. She mortgaged her only leaking roof so I could have the money to rent an office for my first company! Everything you are wearing, every diamond around your neck, was bought with her sweat and blood!"
Patricia, maintaining her shameless nature, tried to save face with a dismissive chuckle.
"Oh, please, that was decades ago. We are living in the present now. You are a billionaire, not that poor boy anymore. Don't drag up the past to justify this absurdity."
Gabriel pointed directly at the kitchen doors, toward the brilliantly lit dining room.
"Every extravagant thing out there, this entire present reality, only exists because she accepted losing everything in her past to give me a chance! And you dare lock her in here?"
Saying that, Gabriel turned around. He grabbed a cheap plastic tray. He placed the bowl of cold, fat-congealed soup and the leftover bread onto it.
Doña Rosario panicked and stood up, trying to grab his arm.
"No, son! Don't do it. People will laugh at you. I beg you, don't ruin your own birthday."
Gabriel looked back at his mother, his eyes now filled with absolute, unwavering resolve.
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"They are not worthy of laughing at us, Mom. Today, I am going to show them exactly who Gabriel Herrera really is."
And without giving anyone a chance to stop him, carrying the pathetic plastic tray in one hand, Gabriel took long, powerful strides, pushed open the kitchen doors, and marched straight toward the dining room.
