“Cael, what happened in there?” Abigail asked, throwing off her jacket to the couch in her room, her eyes blazing with annoyance. Cael wondered how she was able to act civilized and calm until they got home. He bit the corner of his lip and shrugged. “You are shrugging like none of this matters?” she asked.
“Mom, let us calm down. I am sure that Cael here has a perfectly good explanation for what happened,” Frances said. She did not think that there was a good explanation; she was only hoping for it. She turned to Cael, who stood there with his hands in his pocket, and he looked like a guy slouched over a motorcycle that did not have a care in the world.
“Calm down?” Abigail said after a while. She had expected her son to say something after his wife had come to his rescue like that, but instead of his words, all she heard was his heavy breathing. “Can’t you see how he is acting? Acting like I have never done anything for him; he threw it all out without even thinking about it once, and I am supposed to calm down? Why should I do that?”
“Cael honey,” Frances said, moving closer to him, hoping that he would snap out of whatever spell he was under. His mom had been working so hard to make him the chairman, and she even married him to ensure that the dream came through, but he was pulling down all of it with his hands.
“Charles wrote you a document, didn’t he? Can’t we bring that up and make him pay for going against it?” Abihail asked, suddenly remembering what he had shown her earlier.
“That was a fake,” he let out. She looked at him, horror written all over her face. She swallowed because she felt something bitter rise up her throat.
“Fake? How can it be fake?” she asked and then realized that her son had switched up on her. He had come in with that fake document just to get the evidence she had to incriminate herself. “So you joined hands with Charles?” she asked, her voice coming out like a breeze. He could barely make out her words.
“You were forcing me to be the chairman when I told you countless times that I was not interested in any of that.” Frances could not believe her ears. She had fallen for him but the only reason that she had decided to be with him was because he had the chance of being the chairman. She could not believe that she had married when he was trying to self-sabotage. She shook her head with her eyes closed, hoping that when she opened her eyes, the situation would have reset.
“Forcing you? This is your right, and it is only right that you…” she stopped when she saw him raise his hands.
“You might want to see this.” Cael’s voice came out silently as he pushed himself to an upright position. He shuffled from feet to feet till he was standing in front of them. He opened up the file holder he had been holding and gave the content to his mom.
“What is this?” she asked, taking the papers stapled together from his hands. She was thinking it might be some kind of evidence against Cade and Charles that they could use to their advantage. Her mind was making her think that, of course, her son would not allow this opportunity to slip from his hands so easily.
“What is this?” she asked again, her eyes scanning the documents in shock. She gulped her confident tone, now sounding like she was a little child being confronted by the truth she had been hiding. “How did you get this?” she asked, biting the corner of her lips.
“Before you get any more shocked, you should check the entire content,” Cael said, taking a step back. Abigail flipped through the pages.
“What is this, and how did you get this?” she asked, taking a step back and clutching onto the document.
“I knew something was fishy, so I hacked into the safe and found that.”
“The safe?” she asked, her eyebrows knitting together. Why the hell would this be in a safe in the house?
“Looking at the expression on your face, I must say that the content in that document must be true,” he murmured. He hoped that this was just one of Charles’s tactics to frame her, but she looked like someone who was caught in the actions.
“True? What do you mean by true? She stuttered, her hands turning white and her face pale. “This can’t be; it is all a lie.”
“So how did Dad die?” he asked, and Frances gasped.
“Cael, what are you saying? Are you accusing your mother of killing your father?” she asked. She was getting the gist of it, but she wanted to know what the real story was.
“How did he die?” he asked again, ignoring Frances.
“He just died,” Abigail let out silently. She closed her eyes, and tears began to stream down them. “I did not mean to do it,” she said, feeling a bit of shame over her now that her son had caught her. She could not understand how Charles knew about something like this, and yet he kept it hidden. He could have locked her away with all of the evidence he seemed to have, but still, he kept her close. She wondered what he was thinking.
“So you did it,” he asked, his steps flattering as he created a gap between them. He could not believe what he had seen, and he brought it to her, hoping she would never confess to it, but she was confessing.
“I am sorry,” she said, her entire face now covered with tears.
“How much longer were you planning to hide it from me?” he asked.
“Cal, I did all of this for you. If I had let him, you would have had at least twelve more brothers to struggle with,” she said. He could not believe she was justifying her actions.
“You killed him, and no matter how we look at it, it is wrong.” She looked at him standing at the door and shook her head. She did not know what to say because she could see her end looming.
“Wait”
“I need to think properly about what I would do to you, but for now…” he trailed off and was out of the room.
“I better go with him,” Frances said, walking away before Abigail could say anything.
Abigail looked down at the paper that looked like a report; if Charles knew, why did he let her be? What was his plan? She stumbled out of the room to his room and pushed herself in.
“What do you think you are doing?” Charles asked, startled to see her standing there. They were still waiting for Ophelia and Cade to come over for dinner together.
“What is this?” she asked, showing him the document.
“How did you get that?” he asked, surprised to see it in her hands.
“Why do you have this?” she asked.
“I wanted to know what happened to my son after he died so suddenly. Can’t a father try to find out?” He asked, and she shook her head.
“That is not the issue; the issue here is that why didn’t you use it? What was your plan?”
“I knew you were hurt, and my son was wrong. That was the only way I could apologize for his wrongs.”