Chapter 4 - The Arrival of Martha
The private suite on the seventy-fifth floor felt both terrifying and magnificent. While I sat nibbling on a pastry, watching the clouds drift past the massive glass windows, the atmosphere outside Nathaniel's private office hummed with suppressed electricity.
Through the heavy oak doors, I could hear muffled phone calls, urgent commands, and the hurried clicking of heels across the marble hallway. Mr. Graves had barely left my side, pacing back and forth near the window while periodically checking his encrypted smartphone.
"Sir," Ms. Gable's voice crackled through the intercom on the mahogany desk. "The security team has arrived at the Elm Street address. They’ve secured Mrs. Vance. They’re bringing her up via the private freight elevator now. Estimated arrival: two minutes."
Nathaniel stopped pacing. All the color that had returned to his face drained away once more, replaced by a raw, naked vulnerability that made him look every bit of his seventy years.
He looked at me, his silver-rimmed eyes shining with unshed tears.
"Ruby... your mother is coming," he whispered, his voice trembling. "She hasn't spoken to me in twelve years. She thinks... she believes I threw her out. She thinks I abandoned her."
Before I could ask what he meant, a soft chime signaled the arrival of the private elevator at the end of the corridor.
Heavy footsteps echoed across the floor. Then, the double doors of the office swung open.
My mother stood in the doorway.
She looked exhausted, her hair pulled back into a messy ponytail, wearing her faded blue denim jacket and holding a canvas tote bag like a shield against the grandeur of the room. Her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen from crying—evidently, the men in dark suits who had knocked on our apartment door had terrified her into thinking the worst.
"Ruby!" my mother screamed, dropping her bag and sprinting across the fifty-foot expanse of polished floor toward me.
"Mom!" I cried out, leaping from the oversized leather chair and throwing my arms around her waist.
She dropped to her knees, burying her face in my hair, sobbing uncontrollably as she squeezed me so tight I could barely breathe.
"Are you okay? Did they hurt you? Why are we here, Ruby? What happened?" she blurted out, her voice cracking with pure maternal terror. "A man in a black suit knocked on our door, said my rent was paid in full, and told me I had to come to Graves Tower immediately. I thought... I thought we were in trouble..."
"You're not in trouble, Sarah," a deep, gravelly voice echoed from across the room.
My mother froze.
Slowly, she lifted her head from my shoulder. Her tear-filled eyes drifted upward, moving past my small frame until they landed on the tall, silver-haired man standing near the window.
The color drained from my mother’s face. The soft, protective warmth in her expression vanished in an instant, replaced by a look of such profound, icy resentment that the temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees.
"Dad," she whispered, the word sounding less like a greeting and more like a curse.
Nathaniel took a tentative step forward, his hands raised palms-up, as if surrendering to an enemy combatant.
"Sarah... thank God," he breathed, his voice breaking. "You're safe. You're both safe."
"Don't you dare," my mother hissed, standing up slowly while keeping me safely tucked behind her skirts. She glared at him with a fire I had never seen in her gentle, quiet eyes before. "Twelve years, Nathaniel. Twelve years of living in rat-infested basements, working three cleaning jobs until my hands bled, watching my daughter eat cold cereal for dinner—and you have the nerve to have your thugs drag us up to your golden cage?"
"Sarah, please," Nathaniel pleaded, taking another step forward. "Listen to me. I didn't know. I swear to you on your mother's grave, I never knew you were living like that."
"You didn't know?" My mother let out a harsh, bitter laugh that held a decade of suppressed agony. "Arthur Sterling told me you disowned me! He showed me the signed letters, the bank account closures, the legal notices cutting me out of the family trust the moment I refused to marry that shipping heir you picked out for a corporate merger!"
Nathaniel stopped dead in his tracks. His face went completely blank, then darkened into a mask of pure, unadulterated fury.
"Arthur... showed you letters?" Nathaniel whispered, his voice dropping into a terrifying register. "Letters signed by me?"
"Don't act innocent," my mother cried, tears spilling over her lashes once again. "He said you told him that if I chose my own path, I was dead to you. He said you never wanted to see my face again."
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Nathaniel closed his eyes, his fists clenching so tightly at his sides that his knuckles turned white.
"I never signed those letters, Sarah," he said, opening his eyes, a deadly storm brewing in his gaze. "Arthur Sterling lied to you. And today, I am going to make him pay for every single tear you've shed in the last twelve years."
