Chapter 7: The Family Gathering
"A joke?" I stepped closer to him, the faint smile vanishing from my face as my eyes locked onto his. "You humiliated a seven-year-old child who looked up to you. You told him he had no future simply because you wanted to feel like a big man in front of a yard full of enablers."
"I was just messing around! You know how I am!" Marcus pleaded, reaching out a hand, but I instantly stepped out of his reach.
"I know exactly how you are," I said sharply. "And now the rest of the family is going to find out too. There's a mandatory dinner at Mom and Dad's house tonight at six o'clock. If you aren't there, the non-renewal notice for your office lease goes out to your board tomorrow morning."
By six o'clock that evening, the dining room of my parents' suburban home was suffocatingly tense. My mother had laid out her finest china, sensing the impending storm, while my father sat at the head of the table looking deeply uncomfortable in his casual polo shirt. Marcus sat slouched in a chair, staring intensely at his water glass, while his wife nervously flipped through her phone.
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I walked into the room carrying a thin leather briefcase, sitting down directly across from my brother. Daniel was safely at home with a trusted, highly paid nanny I had hired for the evening, far away from the toxic dynamics of this family. "Why did you call this meeting?" my father asked, looking back and forth between his two adult children. "Is something wrong with the business loan, Marcus?"
"Marcus has been telling you all for five years that he supports me," I began, opening the briefcase and sliding a stack of printed financial statements across the polished wood table toward my parents. "It's time to correct the public record once and for all."
