Chapter 4 - The Council of Parasites
Marcus’s dining room table was considerably smaller and far less grand than the one at the Westport estate, but tonight, it was packed to maximum capacity.
Marcus, his wife Sarah, Arthur, and Eleanor sat in tense, miserable silence around a takeout box of cold Chinese food. The television in the living room was muted, but the flashing blue light from the screen cast eerie shadows across their anxious faces.
“What do you mean, seventy-two hours?” Marcus yelled, slamming his chopsticks down onto the table so hard they bounced off and hit the floor. “Dad, how could you be so stupid? You didn't check the deed? You lived there for thirty years and you never bothered to verify who actually held the primary title?”
“Don't you dare take that tone with me, Marcus!” Arthur snarled, his voice trembling with exhausted rage. “I built that construction company from the ground up! I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars maintaining that damn money-pit over the decades! How was I supposed to know that old man Vance hated me so much he’d bypass his own flesh and blood to hand it all to a dead girl’s kid?”
“To Claire’s daughter, Dad!” Sarah chimed in, her voice sharp with bitterness. “To your own granddaughter—or do you still want to pretend she doesn't exist?”
“She is not my granddaughter!” Arthur shouted, slamming his fist against the table, rattling the paper cartons. “That little girl has none of our blood! She’s an outsider! A stranger that Daniel dragged into our lives just to spite us!”
“Well, that outsider just threw us out on the street!” Eleanor sobbed into a paper napkin. “We have three days, Marcus! Three days to pack up a thirty-room mansion! Where are we going to put forty years of antiques? Where are we going to sleep?”
Marcus rubbed his temples, feeling a splitting migraine coming on. As a corporate lawyer, he knew the law. There were no loopholes left. Claire’s will was ironclad, Jonathan Vance’s trust was legally bulletproof, and Daniel was acting entirely within his legal rights as Emily’s guardian.
“We have to talk to him,” Marcus said quietly, staring down at his plate.
Arthur scoffed. “Talk to him? Never. I will not beg that ungrateful little bastard and his adopted brat for anything. I’d rather sleep in my car.”
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“Then enjoy the winter frost, Dad,” Sarah snapped, crossing her arms. “Because we have a three-bedroom mortgage, two kids in private school, and zero square feet of space for two bitter old people and forty boxes of antique porcelain. You have to call Daniel.”
Silence descended upon the room once more, heavier and more suffocating than before. The empire Arthur had built on pride was crumbling into dust, and the only person who could stop the wrecking ball was the very son he had spent a lifetime treating like a disappointment.
