Chapter 2 - Emptying the Hive
By midnight, the music had stopped. I didn't care how Gertrude and Prudence cleared out their wealthy guests; all I knew was that the laughter died down, replaced by the hushed, terrified whispers of two parasites realizing their host had returned with teeth.
I brought Sarah and Jamie into the master bedroom—the room I had envisioned sharing with her while sleeping on a thin cot in the labor camps. The sheets were silk, bought with my money, but they had Prudence’s perfume on them. I stripped the bed bare, threw the expensive linens into the hallway, and retrieved fresh, untouched blankets from the storage closet.
I ran a warm bath for Sarah and fed Jamie the fresh fruits and chocolates I had brought from the airport. Watch him eat real food, without looking over his shoulder in fear, was a knife to my heart, but it was also the first drop of medicine.
"They took my phone, Michael," Sarah told me later, wrapped in a oversized shirt of mine. "Three years ago, Gertrude said the bill was too high. She gave me an old flip phone that could only receive incoming calls. Every time you called, she stood over me with a hand on Jamie's shoulder. If I said anything about the conditions, she threatened to put Jamie out on the street while I was at work."
"Work?" I sharpened my gaze. "What work?"
"Cleaning the houses down the street. Gertrude told the neighbors I was the live-in maid to explain why I was always dirty." Sarah’s tears were silent now, dried by an old, bitter exhaustion. "She collected my wages, Michael. She said it was 'rent' for letting Jamie stay on the property."
Every word she spoke was a nail in the coffin I was building for my biological family.
At 2:00 AM, there was a soft knock on the bedroom door. It was Gertrude, her face scrubbed of makeup, looking her actual age—bitter, old, and desperate.
"Michael," she whispered as I stepped out into the grand hallway, shutting the door firmly behind me. "We need to talk reasonably. You've been gone a long time. The economy changed. The expenses for this house—"
"Where are the bank records, Gertrude?" I asked, crossing my arms.
"I don't appreciate your tone," she sniffed, trying to regain her footing. "I am your mother. I gave you life."
"And I gave you ninety thousand dollars, plus the title to a four-million-dollar estate," I replied. "Tomorrow morning, the locks change. Tomorrow morning, you and Prudence will provide me with a full itemized receipt of every dollar I wired to your account, or I will call the police before the sun hits the gates."
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Gertrude’s eyes widened. "You wouldn't dare arrest your own mother."
"Try me," I said, staring directly into her cold eyes. "You starved my son. You enslaved my wife. To me, you are not a mother. You are just a thief I haven't locked up yet."
