Chapter 5 - The Screaming and the Cursing
At 2:30 PM, I was sitting in my glass-walled corner office sipping chamomile tea when my phone began to buzz furiously on my desk.
The caller ID showed Mom.
I let it ring three times before picking up and putting it on speakerphone.
"Maya! What in God's name is going on?!" my mother's voice shrieked through the speaker, so loud that even Michael, sitting across the room, could hear every word. "Your father just got an email saying our retirement distributions are frozen for an audit! And Brad was just served an eviction notice at his office! What kind of sick game are you playing?!"
Before I could answer, another line rang. It was Jennifer. I clicked the button to merge the calls.
"Maya, you psycho!" Jennifer screamed, her voice bordering on hysterical. "Brad just had his entire broker profile suspended by the building management! They're locking his office doors in thirty days! And when we tried to go to the country club for lunch, the security guard turned us away at the gate in front of all our friends! They said our family name is flagged!"
I sat back in my leather chair, perfectly composed, taking a slow sip of my tea.
"Hello, Jennifer. Hello, Mom," I said calmly.
"Don't you 'hello' us!" my mother screamed. "Fix this right now! Do you have any idea how embarrassing this is?! Brad’s boss is calling him right now screaming! Your father is having a panic attack!"
"Why would I fix it?" I asked, keeping my voice cold and steady.
"Because we are your family!" Jennifer yelled. "How dare you do this to us? You're ruining our lives over nothing!"
"Nothing?" I repeated softly, letting the word hang in the air.
The temperature in my voice dropped below zero.
"Yesterday was my seven-year-old daughter's birthday," I said, each word deliberate and razor-sharp. "She spent a week making invitations for you. She sat on the couch in her dress, waiting for her grandmother and her aunt. And you walked into my house, disrespected my home, ignored my child, and walked out after ten minutes because you had 'better things to do.'"
Silence fell over the phone line for two seconds before my mother sputtered, "That—that was just a birthday party! She’s seven! She won't even remember it!"
"She cried herself to sleep asking me if she did something wrong," I said coldly. "She felt worthless because of you. And I swore to myself last night that nobody—not even the people who gave birth to me—will ever make my daughter feel worthless again."
"You are being completely unreasonable!" Jennifer spat, her tone filled with venom. "You're abusing power you don't even deserve! You think you're better than us just because you married into money?!"
I chuckled softly. It was an amused, quiet laugh that instantly stopped Jennifer in her tracks.
"Jennifer," I said gently. "Michael didn't build this company. I did. I own the building Brad works in. I own the management firm that holds Dad's money. I own the shares in the club you love so much. You lived your whole life thinking I was standing in your shadow, when the reality is I was buying the ground you were standing on."
"You... you can't do this to us!" my mother sobbed, her tone shifting from rage to panic as the reality of the situation finally settled in. "Maya, please... we're your family!"
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"Yesterday, you told me you had better things to do," I said. "Today, so do I. Have a wonderful afternoon."
I hung up the phone.
