Victoria: Marcus... did you say pregnant?
Victoria looked up from her seat near the American flag, her hands trembling as she touched her lower stomach.
Marcus: I found the test on your vanity desk this morning, Victoria. I wanted to surprise you with flowers tonight, but then I got the camera alert on my phone.
Evelyn: Pregnant?! With her child?! You're going to hand our family trust over to a gold-digger's baby?!
Marcus: Shut your mouth! Victoria came from nothing, but she has more honor in her little finger than you've had in your entire life!
Evelyn: Honor? She married you for your inheritance! She wants the Dallas land development firm!
Marcus: She didn't even know I owned the firm when we started dating! She thought I was a project manager on the construction site!
Victoria: I loved Marcus when we lived in a one-bedroom apartment, Evelyn. I never cared about your mansion or your pearls!
Evelyn: Liar! All young women are the same! They see a billionaire's estate and they jump at the chance!
Marcus: Stop projecting your own sins onto my wife, Evelyn. We all know how you married my father.
Evelyn snapped her head toward Marcus, her eyes widening in rage.
Evelyn: How dare you bring up your father!
Marcus: Why shouldn't I? I opened his private office safe this afternoon with the lawyer present.
Evelyn: You... you opened the floor safe?
Marcus: Yes. The one behind the oil painting. And I found the letters from twenty years ago.
Down below, Victoria pulled herself up using the edge of a chair, leaning against the wooden frame as she listened to the confrontation.
Victoria: What letters, Marcus?
Marcus: The letters showing that Evelyn isn't my biological mother at all.
A heavy silence fell over the grand mansion foyer. The ambient hum of the air conditioning was the only sound left in the room.
Evelyn: Marcus... don't say another word. You don't know what you're talking about.
Marcus: My real mother died giving birth to me in a hospital in Houston. My father married you six months later because your family held the mortgage on his first construction yard!
Evelyn: I raised you! I took care of this house for thirty years!
Marcus: You treated me like a financial asset! You hid the truth about my mother so I would never look for her family or her rightful share of the estate!
Evelyn: That share was absorbed into the business! It belonged to the family brand!
Marcus: It belonged to my birth mother's trust fund! A trust fund that was supposed to be handed to me when I turned twenty-five, which you stole using forged power-of-attorney documents!