Chapter 4 - The Poisoned Well
While Teresa and Mason sat behind bars awaiting their formal trial date, the rest of the Bradley family didn't go quietly into the night.
Two days after the bail hearing, I arrived home from work to find my driveway blocked by three cars. Aunt Betsy, Uncle Richard, and two of my older cousins were standing near my front gate, holding signs and screaming at the private security guard I had stationed at the entrance.
"Connor Bradley is a monster!" Aunt Betsy was shrieking into a megaphone aimed at my neighbors' houses. "He locked his own sixty-two-year-old mother in a jail cell! He abandoned his family for a manipulative, gold-digging girl!"
Neighbors were stepping out onto their lawns, taking out their phones to record the scene.
I pulled my truck up, parked across the street, and stepped out into the evening cold. My chest burned with a mix of fury and disgust. These were the people who had eaten at my table, accepted my mother's stolen money, and turned a blind eye to my wife's suffering.
"Betsy!" I shouted, walking across the asphalt toward them. "Take that megaphone and get off my street before I have the sheriff impound every vehicle parked here!"
Aunt Betsy turned, her face flushed red with fake righteous indignation. She marched right up to the property line, pointing a chubby finger at my chest.
"You think you're so big now because you're an engineer?" she yelled. "Your mother gave up her entire life for you after your father died! She managed your money because you were too stupid to see that Amy was spending you into the ground!"
"Amy didn't spend a dime, Betsy," I said, my voice dripping with cold disdain. "Amy was eating bread crusts while my mother bought you three thousand dollars worth of dental veneers with my stolen credit card."
Aunt Betsy froze for a fraction of a second, her lips pulling back over her unnaturally white, brand-new teeth.
"That... that was a family gift!" she stammered, looking around nervously at Uncle Richard.
"It wasn't a gift. It was stolen money," I countered, pulling out my phone and tapping the screen. "And right now, Victoria Sterling is filing civil asset forfeiture summonses for every relative who accepted funds, gifts, or property purchased through Teresa Bradley & Mason Bradley Enterprises LLC."
Uncle Richard’s face turned pale. "Wait... what do you mean, asset forfeiture?"
"I mean," I stepped closer, looking Uncle Richard in the eye, "that three-thousand-dollar riding lawnmower Teresa bought you for Father's Day? It was paid for with my stolen funds. The five hundred dollars in cash she gave your daughter for her college tuition? Stolen funds. Every single piece of stolen property will be repossessed by court order within forty-eight hours unless you return it willingly."
"You wouldn't sue your own family!" Uncle Richard gasped.
"You aren't my family," I said flatly. "My family is inside that house—the wife you treated like a servant and the baby you let burn with a fever while you drank my liquor."
Before Richard could respond, two Maricopa-style deputy cruisers pulled up onto the curb, their lights flashing. Officer Chen stepped out of the lead car, holding a stack of formal civil summonses.
"Richard Bradley? Betsy Bradley?" Officer Chen called out. "You've been formally served with civil fraud deposition notices in the matter of Bradley v. Bradley et al. Please step away from the property immediately."
Aunt Betsy snatched the summons from Officer Chen’s hand, her mouth opening and closing like a landed fish.
"You're a disgrace, Connor!" she shrieked, backing toward her car as the deputies moved in to clear the driveway. "Your father is rolling in his grave!"
"My father would have thrown you off this lawn thirty years ago, Betsy," I replied coldly as I walked past them, unlocked my front gate, and walked into the warm, quiet sanctuary of my home.
Inside, Amy was standing near the living room window, holding Frederick. She looked at me with a soft, cautious smile—the first real smile I had seen on her face in six months.
May you like
"Are they gone?" she asked softly.
"They're gone, baby," I said, taking Frederick into my arms and kissing his rosy, healthy cheek. "And they're never coming back."
