Chapter 11 - The Denied Request
|
"It's just a minor bridge loan, sweetie," my father said, his voice tightening with suppressed panic. "Fifty thousand dollars. Just to cover some unexpected architectural compliance fees for the new shopping center. I’ll pay you back with interest the second the project opens, I swear."
Fifty thousand dollars.
He was asking the daughter he had utterly ignored, the daughter whose face his wife had bloodied, to hand over fifty thousand dollars to save his fraudulent business.
"You want me to loan you fifty thousand dollars," I repeated slowly, letting the words hang heavily in the air.
"Yes, exactly! It would save the business, Catherine. We're family, after all. Family helps family."
I let out a slow, dark laugh. The sound seemed to startle him on the other end of the line.
"Family helps family?" I echoed, my voice dropping its polite facade and hardening into ice. "That's incredibly interesting, Dad. Because I distinctly remember a time when I desperately needed help. I was eighteen years old. I had just gotten into one of the most prestigious Ivy League architecture programs in the world. I needed tuition money."
"Catherine, please, that was a long time ago—"
"I asked you for help," I interrupted, my voice slicing through his excuses. "And you sighed, reached into your pocket, and handed me a crumpled check for exactly five hundred dollars. You wrote 'books' in the memo line and told me to figure out the remaining sixty-eight thousand dollars on my own."
Dead silence fell over the phone line. He knew exactly what I was doing.
"You found eighty-five thousand dollars to throw Paige a party for a community college certificate," I continued, my fury finally bleeding into my words. "You bought her a BMW. And you sat there and watched Mom claw my face open in the foyer of that country club, and you didn't say a single damn word."
"Catherine, I'm desperate here. The company will go under!"
"Then let it sink," I said coldly.
"You vindictive, ungrateful little—"
May you like
"I am exactly what you made me, Dad," I interrupted one final time. "I figured my life out on my own, just like you told me to. I suggest you do the same. Do not ever call this number again."
I hung up the phone and blocked his number. The blueprint was holding perfectly. The walls were coming down.
