Chapter 2: The Name on the Phone
I stood at the door and looked at my son.
He wasn't the boy I had raised.
He was a man in an expensive suit, red-faced and furious, demanding I fix what I had done — as though I were the one who had caused harm tonight.
"Mom, you need to reverse this.
Now."
"Steven," I said quietly.
"Did you ask Amber to apologize?"
He blinked.
"That's not the point."
"It's exactly the point."
He pushed past me into the hallway, phone already in his hand.
"Do you know how embarrassing this is for her?
She's been crying for an hour."
I almost laughed.
Amber had been crying.
"And what was I doing in that bathroom hallway, Steven?
While fifty people laughed?"
He didn't answer.
He was already typing.
Then his phone rang.
He glanced at the screen and his face changed.
It wasn't Amber calling.
It was a name I hadn't seen in eleven years — a name connected to a business deal Steven had told me was closed, settled, and gone.
He rejected the call immediately.
But not before I saw it.
"Who is that?" I asked.
"Nobody." He pocketed the phone too quickly.
"This has nothing to do with tonight."
But his hands weren't steady anymore.
And I realized — the dinner, Amber's performance, the humiliation in front of fifty guests — it hadn't been cruelty for its own sake.
It had been a distraction.
---
What were they trying to keep Margaret from finding out?
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