His Lesson Killed My Mother Now He Will Pay Chapter 03
My phone rang again almost immediately.
Graham’s face reappeared, his impatience a mask.
“Nora, how long are you going to keep this up?”
Sloane leaned toward the camera, her voice as smooth and placid as a therapist’s.
“Before we return your documents, you need to apologize for calling me a cold-blooded monster last night. I was only helping Graham maintain his boundaries. You can’t use a disaster to avoid personal growth.”
I clenched the death certificate in my hand.
“Who gave you my voicemail?”
Sloane didn’t answer. She just looked at Graham.
He seemed perfectly at ease. “I did.”
“I begged you to save my mother, and you gave the recording to her for a podcast?”
“You were having an emotional breakdown. You needed professional intervention.” He frowned. “Sloane altered your voice, and the podcast’s profits are all going to the hurricane relief fund. At least your mother’s crisis had some value.”
I almost laughed.
Graham could drop tens of thousands on Sloane’s private coaching sessions and toss money at her livestreams without a second thought, but he wouldn’t keep a single, pre-booked evacuation van in place for my mother.
A voice called my number over the lobby’s intercom.
Graham glanced at his watch.
“Be at City Hall in ten minutes. Otherwise, the appointment is postponed, and your access to the apartment stays frozen.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“I’m reminding you to face reality,” he said, his voice hardening. “Nora, your mother’s house is gone. The new housing, the medical care, the cleanup—do you have any idea how much that’s all going to cost?”
The edge of the death certificate dug into my palm.
I opened my mouth, on the verge of telling him she was already dead.
Then Sloane murmured beside him, “Don’t ask how her mother is. That would just reward her disaster narrative and pull you back into savior mode.”
Graham dutifully looked away.