Chapter 3 - The 90-Day Ultimatum
For forty-eight hours after our confrontation, my phone buzzed incessantly. Mark had clearly run straight to his mother and sister to deliver the terrifying news that I wasn't the docile, easily manipulated cash cow they thought I was. My screen lit up with furious text messages from Diane calling me a venomous leech, followed by toxic voicemails from Vanessa demanding to know why I was “tearing the family apart over money.”
I blocked their numbers instantly, routing all communication directly through my personal attorney, a pitbull of a lawyer named Jonathan Vance.
On the third morning following the disastrous dinner party, right as I sat down at my desk at my accounting firm, my office landline rang. It was a restricted number. Against my better judgment, assuming it was a client, I picked it up.
“Claire! Thank God you finally answered your phone!”
It was Diane. But the arrogant, cold snicker she had worn while serving me an empty plate was completely gone. Her voice was shrill, trembling, and dripping with frantic, desperate panic.
“How did you get this number, Diane?” I asked, my voice as flat and unyielding as a slab of granite.
“Never mind that!” she shrieked over the line. “Listen to me, Claire, we have a massive crisis. The bank just sent a final default notice! My mortgage payment is ninety days late! They’re threatening to slap a foreclosure notice on the front door by the end of the week! You need to transfer the funds to cover the back payments immediately—at least fifteen thousand dollars to clear the arrears and stop the legal fees!”
I had to physically restrain myself from laughing out loud right there in my corporate office. The exquisite irony of the situation was so thick I could have cut it with a knife.
“Fifteen thousand dollars?” I asked innocently. “Oh, Diane. I’m so sorry.”
“Don't give me your sorries, just open your laptop and wire the money! The bank manager is breathing down my neck!” she demanded, reverting instantly back to her entitled tone.
I leaned back in my executive leather chair, letting out a long, theatrical sigh. “I honestly wish I could help you, Diane. But I simply don't have it.”
“Don’t lie to me! You make a six-figure salary as a senior accountant!”
“That may be true,” I replied smoothly, “but you taught me a very valuable lesson just two nights ago over a very expensive plate of seafood. Remember your exact words?”
A heavy, terrified silence stretched across the phone line.
“You told me right to my face,” I continued, my voice dropping to a cool, lethal register, “that your funds for me were exhausted. Well, Diane… my funds for you are exhausted, too.”
“You can’t do this!” she screamed, losing control entirely. “I’m family! I’m Mark’s mother! If I lose my house, I’ll be out on the street! You have a legal and moral obligation as a wife and a daughter-in-law to protect this family!”
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“No, Diane,” I corrected her sharply. “A family supports each other. You and your children treated me like an ATM machine while mocking me behind my back. Enjoy the foreclosure notice. Consider it the interest on the $184,550 you already stole from me.”
Before she could shriek another curse word, I clicked the end call button and blocked the number permanently. The screen went dark, but my heart raced with the exhilarating thrill of absolute, hard-won justice. The trap was finally set, and Diane had walked right into the center of it.
