His Lesson Killed My Mother Now He Will Pay Chapter 06
Graham’s expression went flat.
“It’s called reality. Your mother’s funeral will cost money. Rebuilding her house will cost money. All those bills are going to land on you. Who besides the Vale family is going to shoulder that financial burden for you?”
*Financial burden.*
My mother had spent her life terrified of becoming one to me. And now, in front of a table full of people, he had just summed up her entire existence in two words.
Suddenly, Sloane opened the storm box and pulled out a weathered wooden music box.
My breath caught in my throat.
After Hurricane Katrina, my mother had spent a full day clawing through the wreckage of our collapsed house. The only thing she’d recovered was that music box, its melody warped but still able to play.
It was the only intact thing she had left from her old life.
I had told Graham that story myself.
Now, Sloane wound the key. A broken, wheezing tune stuttered out as she turned the box over in her hands, inspecting it like a cheap antique.
I started toward her.
“Put it down.”
“It’s a prop for tonight’s course.” She lifted it higher, out of my reach. “Your excessive attachment to disaster-related objects is a classic symptom of crisis addiction.”
“I said, put it down.”
Sloane smiled.
“Nora, why are you so intent on taking things that don’t belong to you tonight?”
I reached for it.
Graham caught my wrist, his grip like iron.
“That’s enough!”
His fingers tightened.
“Are you really going to make a scene in front of everyone over a broken music box?”
“It was my mother’s. Give it back.”
“Stop this.”
“Give it back!”
Graham stared at me for two long seconds, then finally took the music box from Sloane.
For a split second, I thought he remembered. I thought he remembered that when I’d told him that story, my mother had been in the kitchen making him coffee.
The next second, he placed the music box right back into Sloane’s hands.
“Put it away.”
Sloane smiled, tucked it into the storm box, and fastened the lock.
Only then did Graham release my wrist.
“Sit down and sign the agreement. For tonight, I’ll assume it’s just grief making you irrational.”
Rubbing my reddened skin, I looked at him, my voice cold.
“And if I don’t sign?”