Chapter 2 - The First Slap
Nobody applauded.
Nobody whispered.
Three hundred people simply stared at Lucy.
She turned toward the screens.
"Turn that off."
The technicians did not move.
Lucy looked toward the event director.
"I said turn it off."
The woman shook her head.
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Bennett."
"The feed is locked."
Lucy looked at me.
"You did this."
"Yes."
My father continued speaking from the screen.
"If Ana is watching this publicly, then Miriam found her."
That name meant nothing to most of the room.
It meant everything to Lucy.
She stepped backward.
"Miriam is dead."
A voice came from behind the guests.
"No."
An elderly woman in a navy suit walked slowly toward the stage.
"My name is Miriam Shaw."
"I was Jonathan Bennett's private attorney for the final eighteen months of his life."
Lucy went white.
My father had never mentioned Miriam.
Lucy had told everyone his estate attorney was Charles Vale.
Charles Vale sat at a front table.
He looked suddenly ill.
Miriam reached the dance floor.
She carried a leather case.
"Jonathan hired me after discovering irregularities in the Bennett Foundation."
Lucy laughed.
"This is ridiculous."
Miriam looked at her.
"Then you won't mind if I continue."
Lucy grabbed my arm.
Hard.
"You are humiliating your father."
I looked at her fingers digging into my skin.
Then I remembered my mother crying in the kitchen when Lucy called her cheap at a Christmas dinner.
I remembered Lucy telling guests my mother had married above her station.
I remembered my father laughing nervously instead of defending her.
For years, I had imagined what I would say if Lucy ever touched me again.
I said nothing.
I slapped her.
Once.
The sound cracked through the ballroom.
People gasped.
Lucy stared at me.
I stared back.
"That was for the first Christmas you called my mother a charity case in her own home."
Her eyes widened.
"Ana."
I raised one finger.
"One."
The room erupted in whispers.
I turned toward the guests.
"I promised myself I would never become violent."
"So understand this."
"I am not proud of what I am doing."
"I am naming every humiliation she buried under elegance."
Lucy lifted her hand toward my face.
Security moved.
Not toward me.
Toward her.
Chief of hotel security, Paul Decker, stepped between us.
"No physical contact."
Lucy almost laughed from disbelief.
"She just hit me."
Paul looked at me.
"And if she does it again, I will remove her too."
Fair.
I nodded.
Miriam opened her case.
She removed a document.
"The original trust amendment."
Lucy spoke quickly.
"Forgery."
Miriam ignored her.
"Jonathan transferred voting control of Bennett Logistics into a protected trust."
"Primary beneficiary: Ana Carter."
My heart stopped.
Lucy shouted.
"No."
Miriam continued.
"The amendment was executed three months before Jonathan's death."
"Then why did Lucy inherit everything?"
A reporter shouted from the crowd.
Miriam looked toward Charles Vale.
"Because the amendment filed after Jonathan's death was not the one he signed."
Every face turned toward Charles.
He stood.
"I had nothing to do with this."
My father's video resumed.
"Charles Vale helped Lucy replace my trust."
Charles sat back down.
The ballroom exploded.
Lucy grabbed a microphone.
"This is an attack."
"This woman has hated me since childhood."
"She was obsessed with her father."
"She resented my marriage."
I walked toward her.
"Say my mother was unstable."
Lucy blinked.
"What?"
"You've said it for twenty years."
"Say it now."
She hesitated.
That hesitation mattered.
Then one of the giant screens changed.
A scanned psychiatric evaluation appeared.
My mother's name was at the top.
ELENA CARTER BENNETT.
DIAGNOSIS: PARANOID DELUSIONAL DISORDER.
I had seen copies of it my whole childhood.
It was the document Lucy used to convince everyone my mother had imagined affairs, theft, and threats.
Miriam pointed to the signature.
"The psychiatrist who signed this report died eight months before the listed examination date."
The ballroom went silent again.
Lucy stared at the screen.
I turned toward her.
"Twenty years ago, you used a dead doctor's name to make my mother look insane."
Then I slapped her a second time.
May you like
"Two."
