Chapter 3 - The Parasites Gather
Forty-eight hours after the boardroom execution, the desperation reached its boiling point.
Ryan had spent two nights staying at a cheap, sixty-dollar-a-night motel near the highway, wearing dirty sweatpants he bought from a gas station, living on fast food and sheer, burning hatred.
He couldn't accept reality.
In his narcissistic, twisted mind, he was the victim. He was the brilliant visionary leader who had been betrayed by an ungrateful, conniving wife who had kept secrets from him.
On Thursday afternoon, he met his mother, Evelyn, at a diner near the edge of the city.
Evelyn arrived wearing her fake designer sunglasses and carrying a knock-off Louis Vuitton bag, her face flushed with fury.
“What is going on, Ryan?” Evelyn shrieked, sliding into the vinyl booth across from her son, ignoring the grease stains on the table. “My credit card was declined at the country club yesterday! The manager had the nerve to tell me my membership was revoked because the primary account holder—that quiet little mouse, Elle—canceled the draft! What did you do to her?”
“I didn't do anything!” Ryan hissed, slamming his fist onto the table. “She lied to us, Mom! She’s the owner of Vertex Dynamics! The whole time we were married, the whole time she was sitting at home acting like a clueless housewife, she was running a multi-billion-dollar empire behind my back!”
Evelyn’s mouth fell open. Her sunglasses slipped down the bridge of her nose.
“She... she’s the owner?” Evelyn whispered, her eyes widening with a sudden, grotesque mix of shock and greed. “Elle? The girl who bought her clothes at target?”
“Yes!” Ryan growled. “She set me up! She fired me in front of the entire board! She locked me out of the penthouse, took the Tesla, canceled my cards, and filed for divorce! She’s taking everything!”
Evelyn sat back in the booth, her brain frantically spinning, trying to re-calculate her position.
“Wait,” Evelyn said, her voice dropping into a sharp, devious whisper. “If she’s the owner of Vertex... then those two babies, Leo and Maya... they are the heirs to a multi-billion-dollar fortune.”
Ryan blinked. “Yeah. So?”
“So you are their father, Ryan!” Evelyn declared, slapping the table with her manicured hand. “Under the law, you have parental rights! She can't just throw you out like trash when you are the father of the company’s ultimate heirs! If we push for joint custody—or better yet, full custody by proving she’s an unfit, unstable mother who hides massive corporate assets—you can demand hundreds of thousands of dollars a month in child support and alimony!”
Ryan’s face slowly transformed. The hopelessness in his eyes vanished, replaced by a dark, hungry, scheming grin.
“Unfit mother...” Ryan repeated, testing the words on his tongue. “She was sleep-deprived. She was crying at the gala. She was staggering around in heels... I can argue she’s suffering from severe postpartum psychosis! I can say she’s mentally incompetent to raise two newborns while managing a multi-billion-dollar firm!”
“Exactly!” Evelyn beamed, reaching across the table to grab her son’s hand. “We’ll go to her hotel today. We’ll bring a camera. We’ll provoke her into a rage in front of witnesses, record her breaking down, and take it straight to the family court judge tomorrow morning!”
They thought they were being brilliant.
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They thought they were playing chess against a tired girl.
They had no idea that every single word spoken inside that diner had been recorded by two private investigators sitting in the booth directly behind them, wearing noise-canceling parabolic directional microphones connected directly to Sarah’s computer.
