Chapter 13
Margaret requested one meeting with Vincent before resolving her case.
He agreed.
Laura did not attend.
Neither did the children.
Margaret entered with her attorney.
She had lost weight.
The pearls were still there.
So was the posture.
“You’ve destroyed the family because of one dinner.”
Vincent shook his head.
“One dinner exposed what was already there.”
“I was trying to keep David connected to us.”
“By teaching him his mother could become the enemy?”
“Laura was taking him away.”
“She was moving twenty-seven miles.”
“She was taking him out of this life.”
Vincent leaned back.
“Yes.”
Margaret stared at him.
That was the answer she had never expected.
“You’re allowing it?”
“I’m encouraging it.”
“What did our father build all of this for?”
Vincent looked around the conference room.
Their father had been dead almost twenty years.
Yet somehow he was still being used to make decisions for children who had never met him.
“He built the life he wanted.”
Margaret’s eyes hardened.
“And you’ll let it end?”
“If the alternative is making David feel trapped inside it, yes.”
Margaret became emotional for the first time.
“You don’t understand what it took to keep this family together.”
Vincent did.
That was the problem.
“Together isn’t always the same as healthy.”
She shook her head.
“Emma changed Laura.”
“No.”
“Since that adoption, Laura acts like blood means nothing.”
Vincent’s voice hardened.
“Emma didn’t teach Laura blood means nothing.”
He leaned closer.
“You taught all of us that blood doesn’t automatically mean safe.”
Margaret looked away.
She finally admitted she expected Laura to leave the banquet.
She admitted she expected David to stay.
She still called it a test of maturity.
Vincent called it what it was.
Manipulation.
Her motive was understandable.
May you like
She feared losing the Moretti identity she had spent her entire life protecting.
But fear of losing a legacy did not entitle her to use two children to preserve it.
