Chapter 3 - The Mask Slips
"What... what is this?" Amanda whispered, her voice cracking for the first time in her life. The theatrical bravado she had worn like a crown was vanishing, replaced by naked terror.
Uncle Richard leaned forward, his bushy eyebrows furrowed in curiosity. "What's going on over there? Amanda, what did he give you?"
"Nothing! It's nothing, just business garbage!" Amanda shrieked, violently trying to slam the folder shut. But David slammed his hand down on top of it, his palm flat and unyielding against the paper.
"Don't close it, Amanda. We wouldn't want the family to miss the main course," David said, his tone chillingly polite. He pulled out the first three sheets and slid them down the table toward Uncle Richard and Aunt Clara. "Take a look, Richard. You're an accountant. Tell the table what you see."
Uncle Richard adjusted his reading glasses, picking up the top document with greasy fingers. He squinted at the numbers, his expression shifting from mild curiosity to utter disbelief. "Good God... Evelyn, is this real? This is a forensic audit of the family estate trust from the past twenty-four months."
"Give that to me!" Mom lunged across the corner of the table, knocking over an antique porcelain salt cellar that shattered into three pieces on the hardwood floor. But Richard pulled the paper out of her reach, his eyes darting frantically across the ledger lines.
"There's over four hundred and eighty thousand dollars missing from the maintenance and medical reserves," Richard announced, his voice booming through the room. "Drawn out through shell corporations registered in Delaware... registered under Amanda’s personal LLC. Amanda... you emptied Dad's posthumous care endowment? That money was supposed to fund your mother's assisted living care when she got older!"
The dining room erupted into a chaos of gasps and whispers. Aunt Clara covered her mouth in horror, staring at Amanda as if she were a total stranger. Amanda stood paralyzed, her chest heaving, her eyes darting toward the front hallway as if calculating her chances of bolting out the door into the November chill.
"David, stop this right now!" Mom screamed, tears of sheer panic finally breaking through her makeup. "You gave me your word you would handle this privately! We agreed!"
The room went instantly dead silent again. All eyes swung from Amanda to our mother.
I looked at Mom, my heart sinking into a dark, hollow pit. "You knew?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper above Lily’s soft sniffling. "Mom... you knew she stole Dad's money?"
"She didn't steal it!" Mom cried out defensively, her voice shrill and cracked. "Amanda had an investment opportunity! She was starting an upscale boutique agency in Manhattan! She was going to pay it back with interest! She just needed a little boost, Sarah! You and David have plenty of money, David owns an entire software firm—why do you care if your sister takes a little help from the family?!"
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"A little help?" David laughed, a dry, humorless sound that sent shivers down my spine. "Evelyn, your darling daughter didn't just drain your late husband’s trust. She didn't invest in any boutique. She spent a hundred and twenty thousand dollars in Miami on designer handbags, chartered yachts, and five-star resorts with her deadbeat boyfriend."
David leaned over the table, fixing his gaze squarely on Amanda, who had shrunk back into her high-backed chair. "And that’s not even the reason I brought the folder tonight."
