Chapter 6 - The Unraveling of Leo
Forty-eight hours after Marcus’s arrest, the consequences of a lifetime of fraudulent luxury began to crush the suburban colonial house down to its very foundation.
I spent Friday morning in the conference room of Apex Property Holdings—which was now legally under my sole authority—reviewing the commercial lease contracts for the downtown building at 4th and Main. For the first time in my adult life, I held the original property deeds bearing my mother’s real signature. Her handwriting was neat, elegant, and firm. Sitting there tracing the ink with my thumb, a profound sense of peace washed over the scars I had carried for ten years. She hadn't abandoned me. She had left me an fortress; it had just taken me a decade to take back the keys.
My phone rang at eleven. It was an unlisted landline number.
I answered. "Clare Divas."
"Clare... it’s Leo."
His voice was unrecognizable. The petulant, booming arrogance was entirely gone. He sounded hollow, exhausted, and terrified.
"How did you get this number, Leo?"
"I called your firm's main desk and begged the receptionist to transfer me," he mumbled. "Clare, please don't hang up. Please. I’m sitting on the curb outside the house."
I leaned back in my leather executive chair. "What happened?"
"The bank sent an eviction enforcement notice this morning," he choked out, his breath shuddering into the receiver. "The second mortgage lender accelerated the default because of the fraud investigation. They gave us forty-eight hours to pack our personal things. Mom... Mom had a complete nervous breakdown last night. She locked herself in her bedroom, destroyed all of Dad’s clothes with a kitchen knife, and then her sister came from Ohio and took her away in an SUV. She didn't even pack my bags. She just left me here."
I felt no pleasure in hearing it, but I felt no pity either. It was simply cause and effect—the brutal, indifferent physics of the real world that Marcus had kept his golden son insulated from for nineteen years.
"Where are your friends, Leo?" I asked calmly. "The ones who were supposed to help you move into my apartment?"
A long, humiliating silence stretched across the line.
"I called them," Leo whispered, his voice cracking with shame. "I asked if I could crash on their couch for a few weeks until I could get a student loan. As soon as they heard about Dad’s arrest on the local news... nobody picked up. One of them told me his parents didn't want him associating with someone whose family is being investigated by the state attorney general."
"Welcome to reality," I said. "When the money runs out, the entourage disappears."
"Clare, I don't know how to do this," he sobbed openly now, dropping all pretense of pride. "I don't know how to apply for emergency financial aid. I don't have a resume. I don't even know how to set up my own bank account because Dad did everything through his private wealth manager. I have ninety-four dollars in cash in my wallet, two suitcases on the sidewalk, and nowhere to sleep tonight. Dad’s lawyer said Marcus is facing five to seven years in state prison. He’s not getting out on bail."
"Your father made his choices, Leo," I told him. "He spent nine years spending my dead mother’s money to build a paradise of lies for you and Victoria. Did you really think that foundation would hold forever?"
"I didn't know!" Leo yelled desperately. "I swear to God, Clare, I didn't know he was stealing from you! He told me you were just rebellious and hated our family! He told me you ran away at eighteen because you wanted to hurt him! He told me you were selfish!"
"He told you that so you wouldn't feel guilty while you drove your new car to private school," I replied coldly. "You were nineteen last week when you looked me in the eye inside my own home, called me old, and told me to get out of my apartment so you could play the big shot. You knew enough to be cruel."
He went dead silent on the other end of the line. The weight of his own words from that rainy afternoon had finally landed squarely on his shoulders.
"I’m sorry," he whispered, and for the first time in his entire life, the words didn't sound rehearsed. They sounded broken. "I was an arrogant idiot. I was spoiled and stupid and I thought the world owed me everything because Dad told me it did. I’m sorry, Clare. I really am."
I closed my mother’s blue folder on the desk in front of me. I looked at the rain tapping gently against the high-rise window, remembering the night Marcus changed the deadbolts on me, leaving me shivering in my car with fifty dollars and two garbage bags full of clothes.
I had survived that night. It had forged me into iron. But Leo was not iron; he was soft glass, raised in a greenhouse of stolen wealth, and he was shattering on the pavement.
"Leo," I said, my voice steady and measured.
"Yes?" he gasped, grasping at the tiny shred of attention.
"Take your two suitcases. Walk four blocks down to the bus stop on Elm Street. Take the 14 bus downtown to the corner of 5th and Grand. There is an extended-stay residential motel called The Grandview."
"A... a motel?" he stammered.
"I called the manager ten minutes ago," I continued without emotion. "I paid for two weeks in a standard single room. There is a microwave, a bed, and a shower. In the lobby, there is a diner called Pete’s Grill. Pete needs a dishwasher and a night prep cook. I spoke to him. If you show up at four o'clock clean, sober, and ready to work, he will start you at minimum wage."
Leo was silent for several seconds, completely stunned. "You... you paid for a room for me?"
"Two weeks, Leo," I said, cutting him off before he could mistake my gesture for softness. "Not a day more. You will work thirty hours a week at Pete’s, you will walk to the university financial aid office on Monday morning, and you will apply for independent student status and federal work-study loans like every other working-class kid in this city. If you quit, if you skip a shift, or if you come to my building asking for another cent, the manager will lock your door and your bags will be on the curb."
"Why are you doing this?" Leo choked out, bewildered. "After everything I said to you... after what Mom and Dad did... why?"
"Because unlike Marcus, I don't believe in kicking an eighteen-year-old onto the street with two garbage bags and telling them to starve," I replied. "I’m giving you what Marcus never gave me: a fighting chance to earn your own self-respect. What you do with it is entirely up to you."
May you like
Before he could answer, I ended the call.
I picked up my pen, turned to the final approval documents for the 2.4-million-dollar downtown transit buyout, and signed my mother's name beside my own. The past was finally paid for. Now, it was time to build the future.
