Chapter 2 - Twenty-Five Thousand Euros of Blood and Sweat**
Lunch was a tense, agonizing affair. Ewald complained that the wine was insufficiently chilled, while Lydia loudly lamented the cost of home renovations. Alexander barely spoke three words, pushing his food around his porcelain plate with a silver fork that looked heavy in his trembling hand. Throughout the meal, I felt a strange mixture of sorrow for my son and cold, calculating resolve. I had raised him to be honorable, but marriage to Bianca had turned him into a prisoner of his own domestic life.
Suddenly, right as Lydia finished another dig about my modest pension, Alexander pushed his chair back with a sharp scrape against the hardwood floor. Without a word, he stood up, his face ashen, and disappeared down the hallway toward the master bedroom.
Bianca’s eyes narrowed, shooting a sharp, suspicious glare toward the hallway. Ewald adjusted his glasses, leaning forward with sudden, predatory interest.
A minute later, Alexander returned. He was holding a thick, crisp white envelope. His fingers shook so violently that the paper rattled like dry leaves in an autumn wind. He walked slowly toward me, his boots heavy, and knelt on one knee right beside my chair. The air in the dining room instantly sucked itself out, leaving a heavy, suffocating vacuum.
“Mom,” Alexander whispered, his voice cracking with deep emotion. “I know... I know how hard you worked. You gave up your entire youth, your health, your very life for me. You cleaned offices so I could become an engineer. I saved this money in a separate account for six months, hiding it from... from everyday expenses. Please take it. Buy yourself peace. Buy yourself something truly special.”
With trembling fingers, he slid the heavy envelope into my lap. I lifted the flap. Neatly banded stacks of hundred-euro notes filled the interior compartment. Twenty-five thousand euros. A fortune saved from his engineering salary, a tribute to a mother’s unending devotion.
Before I could even wrap my fingers around the paper, Bianca’s face twisted into an ugly, mask-like snarl.
“No!” she screamed, leaping out of her chair so violently that her water glass tipped over, spilling a dark crimson trail across the white tablecloth. “No! That money is not for her!”
Alexander blinked, looking up at his wife as if he were seeing a monster for the very first time. “Bianca, stop it. It’s my money. I earned it.”
“It is our future!” Bianca shrieked, her voice echoing off the high vaulted ceilings. “We are trying to buy a vacation villa in the south of France, and you are handing twenty-five thousand euros to a cleaning woman who spent her entire life smelling of industrial bleach and cheap detergent? My father needs that capital for his municipal investment portfolio! He deserves dignity, not her!”
Those cruel words struck my chest harder than any physical blow could have. But before Alexander could open his mouth to defend me, Bianca lunged forward. Her sharp, manicured artificial nails scraped viciously across the back of my frail hands, tearing the skin as she ripped the envelope straight out of my grip.
Crisp hundred-euro notes fluttered through the air like wounded birds, scattering across the Persian rug.
Alexander shouted in horror, surging to his feet and grabbing his wife’s arm. “Are you out of your mind, Bianca?! Give that back right now!”
Instead of backing down, Ewald stepped forward like a trained guard dog, pushing my son back with a smug, arrogant grin. Bianca shoved the thick envelope directly into her father’s chest.
“Take it, Dad,” Bianca panted, her chest heaving with adrenaline. “You earned your social dignity. She only ever earned pity.”
For a terrifying, endless moment, the entire dining room went completely dead silent. You could hear the faint ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway. Alexander stood frozen, staring at his wife with horror-stricken eyes, finally realizing the true nature of the vulture he had married. Lydia chuckled softly under her breath, sipping her wine as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. Ewald clutched the thick envelope of my son’s hard-earned savings to his chest, grinning like a dog guarding a stolen bone.
And I, the poor, broken old mother they thought they had crushed into dust, tilted my head back and began to laugh.
It wasn't a bitter laugh, nor a broken one. It was a clear, ringing sound that cut straight through their triumphant silence.
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Bianca’s smug smile vanished instantly, replaced by a flicker of genuine panic. “What is wrong with you, you old lunatic? Are you losing your mind?”
I calmly wiped a tear of mirth from the corner of my eye, reached my hand down beneath the heavy ceramic flowerpot sitting on the center of the coffee table, and lifted the tiny, blinking digital voice recorder I had hidden there hours before.
