Chapter 5 - The Projection on the Wall
On the massive white wall of the foyer, the infrared video played in terrifying, silent high-definition.
Allison watched herself walk into Mom’s bedroom, carrying the heavy steel padlock and zip-ties. She watched her own hands—steady, cold, and cruel—bind my mother’s broken wrist to the wooden bedpost. She heard her own voice echo off the marble pillars of the grand hallway, whispering venomous insults into the darkness of the screen.
“You are a burden, Helen.”
The audio filled the open space of the foyer, bouncing off the vaulted ceilings and ricocheting against the expensive artwork.
Allison froze on the stairs. Her fingers clamped onto the carved wooden banister so tightly her knuckles turned white. All the polished charm, all the rehearsed excuses, all the aristocratic armor she had spent years building vanished into thin air, leaving behind the stark, hideous reality of a torturer trapped in her own trap.
“Turn it off,” she hissed, her voice dropping into a harsh, frantic whisper. “Turn it off right now, Ryder!”
I didn't move. I stood with my hands in my pockets, watching the screen as the video transitioned to another file—one recorded just two weeks ago, showing Allison dumping Mom’s prescribed medication down the bathroom sink while laughing on the phone with one of her society friends.
“Why, Allison?” I asked, my voice terrifyingly calm. “Did you think I wouldn't notice? Did you think because I was three thousand miles away building infrastructure for cities that generate billions of dollars, I couldn't protect my own mother under my own roof?”
“You don't understand!” she shrieked, finally breaking down, her aristocratic mask shattering into jagged pieces. She descended the remaining steps quickly, lunging toward me with clawed hands. “Your mother was draining us! Every time she needed care, it cost thousands! And your obsession with her was ruining our marriage! You cared more about an old woman who couldn't even remember your birthday than you did about your own wife!”
She stopped a foot away from me, her chest heaving, her eyes wild with desperate fury.
“Our marriage?” I let out a dry, humorless laugh. “You married me for the estate, Allison. You wanted the trust, the real estate holdings, and the social standing of the Moretti-Ryder name. You thought once Mom was out of the way, you’d have total control of the accounts.”
“And what if I did?!” she screamed, abandoning all pretense, her voice echoing off the walls. “Who do you think the courts are going to believe? A wealthy, respected woman of society, or an angry husband using hacked, illegal surveillance equipment? The judge will throw your digital files out in five minutes under wiretapping laws!”
She stepped back, a cold, triumphant smirk returning to her lips as she regained her footing in her own twisted reality.
“You can’t touch me, Ryder,” she whispered, her eyes gleaming with malice. “If you try to ruin me, I’ll drag your family name through the mud so fast your head will spin. I’ll claim domestic abuse, I’ll claim you threatened me, and I’ll take half of everything you own before the sun comes up.”
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I looked at her—really looked at her—and realized that the woman standing in front of me wasn't just a monster; she was a fool who still believed the world operated by the rules of old money and corrupt civil courts.
She had no idea who she was dealing with.
