“Excuse me?” my mother scoffed, her theatrical shock instantly melting into venomous arrogance. “You’re kicking me out over a pathetic cake? I bought this house, Thomas. I control the family trust. You throw me out, and you both get absolutely nothing.”
I didn’t flinch. Instead, I knelt onto the ruined marble floor, ignoring the sticky frosting, and gently helped my trembling wife to her feet.
“You didn’t buy this house, Mother,” I said, my voice eerily calm. “My wife’s inheritance did. You just managed the accounts.”
My mother adjusted her gold necklace, sneering. “Semantics. I have power of attorney. I can freeze your assets with one phone call.”
“*Had*,” I corrected.
I pulled my phone from my pocket and turned the screen toward her. Her arrogant smirk vanished, replaced by sheer, blood-draining panic.
It was the feed from the nanny cams I’d quietly installed yesterday in preparation for the baby. But I wasn’t showing her a live view. I was showing a recorded clip from two hours ago.
The HD footage showed my mother not just throwing the cake, but violently shoving my pregnant wife into the counter, and then slipping a heavy dose of crushed prescription pills into my wife’s prenatal vitamin jar.
“Did you really think I came home early just for a slice of cake?” I whispered, stepping toward her. “I came home because the system flagged tampering with the medical cabinet.”
My mother scrambled backward, her designer heels slipping desperately on the smashed blue frosting. “Thomas, wait, you don’t understand—”
Red and blue lights suddenly flashed through the large living room windows, painting the stone fireplace in frantic colors.
“You’re right about one thing,” I said coldly as heavy fists pounded on our front door. “She made a mess. But you’re going to do the time for it.”