“Are you sure you want to give this to me?” Charles asked, looking up to Cael, who stood uncomfortably in the corner.
“Of course I do; why would you ask me that?” Cael said.
“Because you are avoiding my eyes and you keep shifting uncomfortably, when I asked you to sit, you refused, so I am led to believe that you do not want to give this to me, and if that is the case then it is okay,” Charles said. As much as what he wanted to do was important, he knew that Cael had a strong bond with his mother, and throwing her under the bus might be a little difficult for him.
“I am here to do the right thing,” he said, shaking his head. His mother would freak out if she knew she had been played into handing over the documents to him. He could not believe how easily she gave them to him. She trusted him so much, but he had done this to her. She was going to lose her mind.
“Do you know that the right things sometimes have consequences?” Charles asked Cael to drop the file on the table. He would let him run out of there if he wanted to. He could not imagine throwing his mother under the bus; how was he supposed to live with himself after it? He knew that all Cael wanted was to break free from the madness that his mother had put him under, but still, it felt wrong to do. “If you want to back out now, I will give this to you,” he added, patting the file in front. “If you want to back out, you can do so now, and I will let you go without holding onto anything.”
“I am not changing my mind,” Cael said. It was as if each time Charles tried to dissuade him, his mind got stronger.
“Do you know what can happen to your mom?” Charles asked. He wanted to be sure that Cael knew what the result would be like and if he was still willing to go ahead after knowing. He thought that just maybe he might be making rash decisions, and to stop it, this was the only way he knew.
“She might end up in jail,” Cael said, trying his best to look as if nothing was wrong.
“You know that, and you are okay with it?”
“I am not okay with it, but I have to break out of this bondage, and my mom needs to be stopped. She is driven by greed, and she is unable to see everything she is doing wrong; if I let her go on, she might do some real damage to her,” Cael said.
“You are worried about your mom,” Chris commented silently.
“Of course, I am worried about her; I am very worried about her, and that is the reason I have to do this. I just beg that you help her receive the barest punishment,” Cael begged. Charles did not know how to accept his request. He knew that both sons would lose their minds if they knew that Abigail was part of the reason their father died so early. He was being poisoned, and she was doing it small at a time; it was not easy to be traced to her.
“I want to tell you something, and it is only because you brought this to me, meaning that you cannot share it with anybody, and you have to act as if you do not know until the news comes out. If you think you cannot handle the news, all you have to do is call it and I will shut it down.” Cael would have sworn on his life that his grandfather hated him, but see the way he was proving him so wrong.
“It is about my mom, isn’t it?” Cael did not know why, but he felt an unfamiliar presence hover over him, and he did not know the reason why; he wondered how far his mom must have gone.
“It is, but can you promise not to spiral out of control? You need to learn to bring your emotions to check in this situation.”
“I will try my best,” Cael said.
Charles rolled his wheelchair towards a drawer and pulled it open to reveal a safe. He put in the pin, and it beeped open. He took out a document, wheeled himself back to Cael, and gave it to him. “See this,” he said and then added in a murmur, “I am only giving this to you because you said you would be able to handle it.”
Cael’s eyes ran through the document, flipping the pages in a rush as his finger shaked with each page he turned. How did his grandfather have such a detailed document about this case? He closed his eyes with his head bent, took a deep breath, and then pulled up to his grandfather. “Grandpa, what is this?” he muttered, fear gripping him. When his father died, he could never have imagined that his mother had a hand in it. They did not get along after the infidelity case, and Cade came to live in the house, but still, it made no sense to kill him.
“Your mother poisoned your father, and even though it was not the poison that later killed him, it was also what contributed to him dying faster than he should have.”
“Are you going to release this?” Cael asked. How could his mother go to jail for intent to kill? He had thought she would spend a few months in there trying to steal company funds and would be out in no time. If he had strayed alive a little bit more, she could have killed him off.
“No, I want you to have this and give it to your mom; this should be enough for what we want to do,” he said, tapping the laundering evidence he had against her.
“Grandpa,” Cael said in a strained voice. Charles looked up with a knowing expression at his father. His grandson had been too dependent on his mother, so he was sure that this was a big step for him. “Thank you,” he added in a whisper.
“Cael, just so you know, I do not hate you.”
“I know that.”