Chapter 8 - The Civil Destruction
With Carla in prison and the family court battle won, Marcus shifted his entire focus to the civil lawsuit against my parents.
The insurance company formally denied my parents' liability coverage, citing the "intentional act" clause due to my father obstructing the paramedics. Just as Marcus had predicted, my parents were now completely, personally on the hook for the massive civil damages.
During the mandatory civil mediation, my parents sat across a large oak table from Marcus and me. They looked utterly broken. The stress of the last six months had aged them two decades.
"Naomi," my mother pleaded, her voice trembling as she looked at the settlement figures Marcus had laid out. "Please. If you push this through, we’ll lose the house. We have nothing left. Carla’s lawyers took our savings. The second mortgage is underwater. Where are we supposed to go?"
I looked at the woman who had birthed me, the woman who had hissed in my ear that I would "regret it" if I tried to protect my bleeding daughter.
"You should have thought about that before you told me Lily deserved to have her leg broken," I said coldly.
Marcus slid a pen across the table. "You can sign the settlement agreement, liquidating your remaining assets and transferring the deed of your home to my client's trust, or we can go to trial next month, where a jury will likely award my client punitive damages that will garnish your social security checks for the rest of your natural lives."
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My father stared at the pen. He looked at me, his eyes hollow. He finally realized that the obedient, quiet daughter he had walked over his entire life was gone. In her place was a mother who had burned his kingdom to the ground to keep her child safe.
With a shaking hand, my father picked up the pen and signed away his home.
