Chapter 3 - The Gaslighting and the Crack in the Facade**
For five agonizing seconds, nobody in the room breathed. The district attorney’s wife pressed a jeweled hand against her collarbone as if she had just witnessed a crime scene. Heather, who had arrived ten minutes later behind the main group, pushed her way through the doorway, took one look at the red foam cups of instant noodles, and let out a strangled shriek.
“Are you out of your absolute mind, Gwen?!” Heather screeched, her voice echoing off the concrete walls. “You brought the Duponts and district officials to a municipal storage room to eat dollar-store soup?! Have you completely lost your sanity? You’re trying to humiliate our family on purpose!”
Rosalind’s chest heaved beneath her lavender silk dress, her eyes blazing with absolute venom as she rounded on me, abandoning all pretense of polite upper-class decorum.
“You ungrateful, spiteful little trash!” Rosalind hissed, stepping directly into my personal space, her breath hot with fury. “Brandon works seventy hours a week providing for you, keeping a roof over your head, and giving you a life you never deserved! He gives you an allowance, he trusts you with his family obligations, and you pull this deliberate, sabotage stunt just to make us look like fools in front of the district attorney?!”
Murmurs rippled through the gathered crowd. Several guests began whispering behind cupped hands, their eyes darting between Rosalind’s furious face and my calm, unblinking expression.
“Oh, I didn’t sabotage anything, Rosalind,” I replied evenly, my voice cutting through the noise without a single trace of fear. “I merely executed the exact budget I was given. Two hundred dollars doesn't buy prime rib for thirty people. It buys thirty cups of chicken-flavored sodium. Basic mathematics. If Brandon wanted a five-star banquet, perhaps he should have allocated a five-star budget instead of expecting his wife to magically conjure thousands of dollars out of thin air while he spends his weekends playing golf with clients.”
“Don't you dare talk back to me!” Rosalind screamed, her voice cracking as she raised a trembling hand as if she might actually strike me across the face right there in front of the city officials.
Before her hand could descend, heavy, hurried footsteps echoed down the concrete hallway.
“Mom! What in the world is going on? Why did Heather call me screaming that the party location was changed to some basement—?”
Brandon burst through the doorway, dressed in a sharp designer suit, his hair slicked back, a breathless, panicked smile plastered across his face as he pushed past the guests. He had driven straight from his golf club, expecting to walk into a lavish banquet hall filled with applauding executives and grateful family members.
Instead, he skidded to a dead stop beside the folding table, his eyes locking onto the thirty red cups of instant noodles, his mother’s purple-faced rage, and the icy stares of thirty elite guests.
The color drained entirely from Brandon’s face, leaving him looking like a ghost caught in the headlights of an oncoming train.
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“Mom... what... what is this?” Brandon stammered, his confident corporate swagger evaporating into thin air in less than a second.
Rosalind spun around, her fury instantly redirecting its destructive energy onto her golden-boy son. “Your wife! Your pathetic, lazy wife deliberately tried to ruin my seventieth birthday! She rented a rat-infested municipal closet and bought us dollar-store soup! She did this to humiliate us, Brandon! Fix this right now or I swear to God you’ll never see a dime of my estate!”
