Julian stopped on the third step from the bottom, adjusting the gold cufflinks on his designer suit.
He switched on a heavy tactical flashlight, shining the blinding white beam straight into Clara’s face.
Julian: Step away from the corner, Mother. You shouldn't have come down here.
Clara: Julian, step aside right now. We are taking Lily to the emergency room.
Julian: Nobody is going to any hospital. You’re meddling in matters you don't understand.
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 doing fine until you poked your nose where it didn't belong.
Clara: Fine? You held a funeral for her! You put an empty box into the cemetery ground!
Julian: It wasn't empty. It was weighted with ninety pounds of lead bags so the pallbearers wouldn't feel the difference.
Clara: You are sick, Julian. You are completely out of your mind.
Julian: Lower your voice. The estate groundskeeper lives across the driveway.
Clara: Good! Let him hear me! Let the whole world hear what kind of monster you are!
Julian stepped down onto the concrete floor, his eyes narrowing into cold slits.
Julian: I said keep your mouth shut, old woman!
Lily: Daddy, don't yell at Grandma! I'm sorry I woke up!
Julian glared at the shivering girl with pure annoyance.
Julian: Go back under the blanket, Lily. Close your eyes and don't speak.
Clara: Do not speak to her like she is a stray animal!
Julian: You have no idea what kind of pressure I was under, Mother! You never understood business!
Clara: What kind of business requires you to bury your own living child?
Julian: The family trust fund! Sarah’s father tied up twenty 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 died, I couldn't touch a single dollar until Lily turned twenty-five!
Clara: And that made you furious, didn't it?
Julian: My real estate firm was thirty days from bankruptcy! Creditors were filing foreclosure on this entire mansion!
Clara: So you invented a fatal illness?
Julian: The trust had a survivorship clause. If the sole beneficiary dies before adulthood without heirs, the total capital dissolves directly into the surviving father's account!
Clara: You murdered your daughter on paper for twenty million dollars!
Julian: She isn't dead! She’s breathing right in front of you!
Clara: You left her locked in a damp cellar like an animal!
Julian: Doctor Vance arranged a private transport van to take her to a secure boarding estate in Mexico tonight!
Clara: Doctor Vance? The pediatrician who signed the death certificate?
Julian: A half-million-dollar cash wire solved his malpractice debts in an hour.
Clara: You bribed a doctor to drug a six-year-old girl with paralytics?
Julian: It was a safe sedative! She was out cold during the hospital transfer and the viewing!
Clara: She could have suffocated in that van!
Julian: But she didn't! And the estate wire 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 of here with my granddaughter, Julian. Try to stop me and I will scream until the police arrive.
Julian pulled a heavy brass padlock from his pocket, snapping the cellar door latch shut behind him.
Julian: Nobody leaves this basement until my charter flight takes off at four in the morning.