Julian stopped halfway down the wooden staircase, his silhouette blocking the faint gray light from the cellar entrance.
He held a heavy tactical flashlight, aiming its blinding white beam directly into Clara’s face.
Clara: Julian, step aside right now. We are going to the emergency room.
Julian: Nobody is going anywhere, Mother. You shouldn't have come down here.
Clara: Look at your daughter! Look at her skin! She is freezing to death on this cement!
Julian: She has plenty of blankets. She was perfectly fine until you started poking around.
Clara: Fine? You held a funeral for her! You put an empty box into the cemetery ground!
Julian: It wasn't empty. It had eighty pounds of lead weights inside so the pallbearers wouldn't notice the difference.
Clara: You are sick, Julian. You are completely out of your mind.
Julian: Lower your voice. The estate groundskeeper lives right across the driveway.
Clara: Good! Let him hear me! Let the whole town hear that Julian Vance is a criminal!
Julian rushed down the remaining steps, grabbing Clara’s upper arm with crushing force.
Julian: I said shut your mouth, old woman!
Lily: Daddy, don't hurt Grandma! I'm sorry I woke up!
Julian didn't even look at the crying child clinging to Clara’s woolen coat.
Julian: Go back into the corner, Lily. Lie down and cover your face.
Clara: Do not speak to her like she is a stray animal!
Julian: You don't understand the pressure I was under, Mother! You never understood business!
Clara: What business justifies burying your own living child?
Julian: The family trust fund! Sarah’s late father tied up fourteen million dollars in an irrevocable trust fund for Lily!
Clara: Because Sarah knew you were a reckless gambler who ruined every company you touched!
Julian: If Sarah passed away, I couldn't touch a single dollar of the principal until Lily turned twenty-five!
Clara: And that made you furious, didn't it?
Julian: I was thirty days away from bankruptcy court! Creditors were threatening to foreclose on this entire mansion!
Clara: So you invented a terminal illness?
Julian: The trust document had a specific survivorship clause. If the primary beneficiary dies before reaching adulthood without heirs, the total capital dissolves directly into the surviving father's account!
Clara: You murdered your daughter on paper for fourteen million dollars!
Julian: She isn't dead! You see her right here! She was going to be taken care of!
Clara: Taken care of? In a damp cellar covered in mildew?
Julian: Doctor Vance arranged a private transport van to take her to a secluded boarding home in South America tonight!
Clara: Doctor Vance? The pediatrician who signed her death certificate?
Julian: A four-hundred-thousand-dollar cash wire solved his medical malpractice debts in one afternoon.
Clara: You bribed a licensed doctor to drug a child with paralytics?
Julian: It was a safe sedative! She was out cold during the hospital transfer and the casket viewing!
Clara: She could have stopped breathing permanently, you monster!
Julian: But she didn't! And the estate check cleared this afternoon at three o'clock!
Lily: Grandma, my throat is burning. I need water.
Clara pulled Lily tighter against her chest, her eyes blazing with fury.
Clara: I am walking out that door with my granddaughter, Julian. Try to stop me and I will scream until the police arrive.
Julian reached into his heavy overcoat and pulled out a solid iron padlock, snapping the heavy latch shut on the staircase exit.
Julian: You're not going anywhere, Mother. Not until my charter flight takes off from the executive airport at four in the morning.