Chapter 5 - The House of Cards Collapses
The silence in the conference room was absolute, heavy and suffocating. The only sound was the frantic rustling of paper as my father snatched a folder and began tearing through the pages, his face draining of all color.
“This is a lie,” Derek stammered, his voice cracking. He backed away from the table, his eyes darting toward the exit like a trapped rat. “She’s a lawyer, Sabrina! She fabricated this to keep her apartment! It’s all fake!”
“Really?” I asked, leaning against the glass table. “Because I also took the liberty of running a credit check on you, Dad. Would you like to explain to your new son-in-law why the Morrison family estate is mortgaged to the hilt? Why your credit cards are maxed out, and why you’ve been secretly asking me for loans for the past three years to cover mom’s country club fees?”
Derek whipped his head around to stare at my father. “Mortgaged? You told me you owned the Hamptons property outright! You said there was a trust fund!”
“A trust fund?” I laughed, a sharp, genuinely amused sound. “Derek, they don't have a dime. They were banking on you being their retirement plan. Just like you were banking on my penthouse to pay off your loan sharks.”
The realization hit the room like a physical shockwave. The grand illusion they had all been participating in instantly evaporated.
Sabrina dropped the folder, her hands shaking violently. She looked at Derek, her fairy-tale prince, and saw a terrified, broke fraud. “You… you used me,” she whispered, tears ruining her perfectly applied mascara. “You have nothing.”
“I have nothing?!” Derek shouted, dropping his polished facade entirely. “Your parents practically threw you at me because they thought I was a billionaire! You’re all a bunch of broke, pretentious frauds!”
My mother let out a strangled sob and buried her face in her hands. My father stood frozen, his mouth opening and closing in silent, humiliated fury. The mighty Robert Morrison, brought to his knees by his own greed.
“You’re right, Derek,” I said, my voice cutting through the chaos. “They are frauds. But you’re a criminal. And I’ve already forwarded those files to the SEC and the FBI. I imagine they’ll be greeting you at the lobby of your rental apartment very soon.”
Derek’s face went entirely pale. Without a word to his new wife, he turned and sprinted out of the conference room, the heavy oak doors slamming shut behind him.
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Sabrina collapsed into a chair, wailing hysterically. My father looked at me, a pathetic, broken old man. “Vivien… please. You have to help us. We’re your family.”
“You stopped being my family the moment you let her strike me in that ballroom to steal my home,” I said, pointing a rigid finger at the door. “Get out of my firm. Get out of my life. And if any of you ever attempt to contact me again, I will release the rest of the financial ruin in those folders to every society column in New York.”
