Chapter 16 - Desperation in Silk
Lucas looked at his vibrating phone on the marble kitchen island. The caller ID read simply: *Mother*.
He let it ring until it rolled to voicemail. Two seconds later, it rang again.
Naomi took his hand. "You don't have to answer it, Lucas. You don't owe her your peace."
"I know," Lucas whispered. "But I want her to hear me say it without a lawyer in the room."
He picked up the phone, swiped the screen, and set it on speaker. "Yes, Evelyn."
"Lucas! Lucas, you have to stop them!" Evelyn’s voice was hysterical, stripped bare of all poise and grandeur. "There are deputies at my door! They’re placing padlocks on the side gate! They’re going to tow the Mercedes!"
"They aren't towing your car, Mother," Lucas replied smoothly. "They're towing the holding company's car. The lease expired three months ago."
"How could you do this to me?!" she shrieked, her voice cracking into a shrill wail. "I gave you life! I built the world you walk in! You let that common peasant and her dirt-farming parents humiliate me, and now you’re throwing me to the dogs?!"
Lucas’s voice remained unnervingly calm. "You humiliated yourself, Evelyn. You kicked a tired woman’s suitcase because you thought her dignity had no monetary value. You judged my wife’s worth by your own shallow, bankrupt scale. You wanted an audience; now you have the entire country watching."
"Lucas, please..." she sobbed, a pathetic, desperate sound that had never once escaped her throat in his thirty-two years of life. "I have nowhere to go. My accounts are locked. Clara won't answer her phone. Where am I supposed to sleep tonight?!"
Lucas looked at Naomi. Naomi’s eyes were steady, without cruelty, but entirely without compromise.
"I hear the local shelters are clean," Lucas said coldly. "Or perhaps you can find a private villa. Just make sure it isn't full."
May you like
He tapped the red button, ending the call. The silence that followed was thick, solemn, and final.
***
