Chapter 4: The Tables Turn
Vanessa was forced to take a job at a local diner—a place she had once looked down on from the window of her Range Rover. The irony was a bitter, suffocating weight. She had to mop the floors, the same floors she had forced Clara to eat off of.
One rainy Tuesday, a woman walked into the diner. It was Clara, now dressed in elegant, tailored clothing, looking healthier than she had in years. She sat at the counter, her presence commanding the room. Vanessa, terrified, tried to avoid the booth, but her manager signaled her to serve them.
May you like
"I don't want anything," Clara said, her voice soft but steady. "I just wanted to see if you knew what it was like to be hungry while others watched."
Vanessa began to cry, not out of regret, but out of the sheer exhaustion of her new reality. Clara didn't gloat. She simply placed a small envelope on the table. Inside was a single check—enough to pay for a month’s rent at a studio apartment and a bus ticket to her home state. "Marcus is done with you," Clara said. "But I don't want you to starve. That would make me just like you."
