Chapter 4 - The House of Glass
While Richard was watching his empire dismantled piece by piece, my sister Lauren was experiencing her own private apocalypse.
Following her humiliated exit from the private clinic where her cards had been declined, Lauren had sped back to her gated townhouse in Oakridge. Her mind was racing. If Emily had cut off the cards, Lauren needed cash. She needed jewelry. She had a safe in the master bedroom filled with luxury watches, diamond tennis bracelets, and gold coins that her husband, Brad, had stored away.
She slammed the front door of the townhouse open, panting, sweating through her designer silk dress.
"Brad!" she yelled, stumbling into the foyer. "Brad, wake up! We have an emergency! Emily has gone insane, Mom is locked up, and we need to liquidate the safe right now!"
She charged into the living room, only to freeze dead in her tracks.
Brad was sitting on the sofa. But he wasn't asleep. He was fully dressed in a suit, his luggage sitting neatly packed by the door. On the coffee table in front of him lay a thick manila envelope and a small, white plastic device.
Beside Brad sat a tall, sharp-looking woman in a charcoal suit.
"Brad?" Lauren whispered, her hand instinctively clutching her swollen belly. "What... what is this? Who is that woman?"
"This is Sarah Jenkins, Lauren," Brad said. His voice wasn't angry. It was terrifyingly hollow, completely devoid of the adoration and subservience he had shown her for four years. "She’s the top divorce attorney in the county."
Lauren scoffed, attempting a nervous, dismissive laugh. "A divorce attorney? Brad, what kind of sick joke is this? I'm eight months pregnant with your daughter! My mother is in jail! Emily is attacking our family! This isn't funny!"
"She's not my daughter, Lauren," Brad said quietly.
The living room went deadly, suffocatingly still.
Lauren's face turned ashen. "What... what did you just say?"
Brad pointed to the coffee table. "That's a prenatal non-invasive paternity test result from DNA Diagnostics. I took a sample of your blood from your routine screening last month after Emily quietly advised me to check the timeline of your 'girls' trip' to Miami last November."
"Emily?!" Lauren shrieked, her voice hitting a dog-whistle pitch. "Emily did this?! She's lying! The test is fake! She doctored it!"
"The test has a 99.99% statistical certainty," Sarah Jenkins said, her tone professional and merciless. "The biological father of your child is Marcus Kane—your personal fitness trainer."
Lauren collapsed onto an armchair, her chest heaving, the walls of her fabricated reality caving in on top of her. "Brad... please... it was one time! I was drunk! I was lonely! You were working so much!"
"I was working eighty hours a week to pay for your seven-thousand-dollar handbags and your lifestyle, Lauren!" Brad roared, standing up, his composure finally shattering. "I tolerated your narcissistic mother! I tolerated your arrogant father! I tolerated the way all three of you treated Emily like a servant while she quietly paid your debts! But you brought another man’s child into our marriage and expected me to fund your lie for eighteen years!"
"Brad, no! Think about the baby! She needs a father!" Lauren sobbed, crawling toward him across the Persian rug. "You can't leave me! Emily turned off my credit cards! The bank is taking the house! I have nothing!"
"That's where you're wrong," Brad said, stepping around her outstretched hands as if she were a piece of roadkill. "The house was purchased in my name and Emily's name as co-signers. Emily notified me this morning that she is withdrawing her financial guarantee due to unauthorized card fraud. I’ve already surrendered the keys to the lender to protect my own credit rating. The sheriff will be here at noon tomorrow to lock the doors."
"No! No! Where am I supposed to go?!"
"Go to Marcus Kane," Brad said cold as ice, picking up his luggage. "Though from what I hear, when he found out you were pregnant three months ago, he packed his bags and moved to Texas to avoid child support."
Brad walked out the front door, leaving Lauren screaming on the floor.
Outside, the heavy mechanical whine of a flatbed tow truck broke the afternoon silence. Lauren scrambled to the bay window, pulling back the curtains.
Two men in reflective vests were hooking chains around the axles of her white Mercedes-Benz GLE coupe—the car she had paraded across Instagram as a "gift from my loving husband."
"Hey! Stop! That's my car!" Lauren shrieked, bursting through the front door into the sunny street, barefoot and hysterical. "Get your filthy hands off my car!"
The tow truck driver didn't even look up from his clipboard. "Lauren Vance?"
"Yes! That car is mine!"
"Not according to the finance company, lady. Emily Vance revoked her authorization on the primary lease agreement four hours ago due to non-payment. Vehicle is being repossessed. Have a nice day."
As the truck hoisted the luxury vehicle into the air and rumbled down the driveway, the neighbors—the very neighbors Lauren had sneered at for years—stood on their pristine lawns, filming the spectacle with their phones.
Lauren fell to her knees on the driveway concrete, clutching her belly as sharp, terrifying contractions began to ripple through her lower abdomen.
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"Help me!" she screamed at the neighbors. "Somebody call an ambulance! My baby! Help me!"
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