Chapter 6 - Paige Breaks the Silence
Paige froze the second she saw us standing in the hallway, flanked by the open door of the ransacked office. Her eyes darted from my red, swollen face to Dad’s rigid stance, and finally down to the stack of legal folders clutched in Uncle Robert's hand.
""Where is your mother, Paige?"" Dad demanded, his voice devoid of warmth.
""She's... she's at the extended-stay hotel near the tollway,"" Paige stammered, pulling her duffel bag tightly against her chest like a shield. ""She wanted me to stay with her, but... she started making calls. She was trying to transfer money from some offshore account she set up on her laptop. She told me we were going to pack our things tomorrow while you were at work and drive to her cousin’s place in Florida.""
Dad let out a dark, bitter laugh. ""Of course she is. Cut and run before the sheriff serves the warrants.""
Paige swallowed hard, tears welling up in her eyes once more. ""Dad... I didn't know about the scholarship. I swear to God, I didn't know.""
""You didn't know?"" I stepped forward, anger flaring hot in my chest. ""You didn't know when you called my graduation cake 'homemade' and shoved it onto the floor? You didn't know when you paraded your new car in front of me every single day, knowing I had to walk three miles to my morning shifts because I couldn't afford gas?""
""I was jealous, okay!"" Paige burst out, dropping her bag onto the floor. ""I was miserable! Mom has been in my ear for two years telling me that you looked down on me! She kept saying that if you went away to some fancy university, Dad would love you more, that you’d become a doctor or a researcher and treat me like trash! She convinced me that you were trying to steal Dad away from us!""
""Your mother is a sick, calculating manipulator,"" Uncle Robert said bluntly. ""And you let yourself be her weapon.""
""I know!"" Paige sobbed, sinking down onto the bottom step of the staircase. ""I know that now! When we got to the hotel, she wasn't even upset that she hurt you, Eliza. She was laughing! She was bragging about how she declined your scholarship offer months ago so you’d be stuck at a local commuter school where Dad could keep an eye on you! She said it was the smartest move she ever made!""
Dad’s fists clenched so hard his knuckles turned stark white. ""She confessed that to you?""
Paige reached into her pocket and pulled out her smartphone. ""She didn't just confess it. She was drunk on wine, pacing around the hotel room, telling me how she staged the entire HELOC loan, how she signed Dad’s name, and how she used Grandma's eight grand to buy my car because she didn't want my friends to think we were poor.""
Paige unlocked her phone with trembling fingers and tapped the screen.
""I recorded her,"" Paige whispered, holding the phone out toward Dad. ""I set the voice memo app on the nightstand while she was ranting. She said everything, Dad. Every single crime. She told me where the hidden ledgers are on her laptop, and she gave me the password.""
I stared at my stepsister in utter disbelief. For four years, Paige had been my tormentor—the spoiled, spiteful girl who borrowed my clothes without asking and mocked my quiet ambitions. But sitting on the stairs in the dim hallway light, stripped of her mother’s toxic coaching, she was just an eighteen-year-old girl who had finally realized she was being raised by a monster.
""Why are you giving this to us, Paige?"" I asked quietly.
Paige looked up at me, her eyes bloodshot and raw. ""Because when I shoved that cake tonight... and I saw Grandma Helen pick up your photo from the floor without saying a single mean word to me... I felt disgusted with myself. I realized that if I stay with Mom, I'm going to turn into her. And I'd rather have nothing than be a criminal like her.""
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Dad took the phone from Paige's hand. He pressed play.
Monica's shrill, arrogant voice immediately filled the hallway: “Your father is an idiot, Paige. He’ll never press charges. He doesn't have the guts. By the time he figures out the home equity loan, we’ll be in Orlando, and he’ll be stuck paying the bank. And Eliza? Let her work the cash register for the rest of her life. She was never better than you, and I made damn sure she never gets the chance to prove it.”
