Lily: Toby! I told you Daddy would break the floor!
Toby: It was so cold down there... the lady in the beige sweater only gave me bread twice a week...
Robert turned his head slowly toward Evelyn, his face contorted in a dark, terrifying rage. The American flag on the wall seemed to loom behind him as he towered over his wife.
Robert: You gave him bread twice a week?! You kept a child in a cellar beneath our living room floor?!
Evelyn: He isn't just any child, Robert! He is the secret that would have ruined your entire career!
Robert: I don't give a damn about my career! Who is his mother?!
Evelyn: Your late sister, Sarah! He is Sarah's son!
A heavy, suffocating silence fell over the room. Robert froze, his hands trembling as he held the pale boy close against his chest. Sarah, his younger sister, had tragically passed away seven years ago in a private clinic in Chicago. Or so Robert had been told by his mother and his wife.
Robert: Sarah died seven years ago... The doctors said she had a fatal heart condition during her pregnancy!
Evelyn: Sarah didn't die of a heart condition, Robert. She died giving birth to that boy in a secret clinic across state lines!
Robert: And you took her newborn baby and locked him in a cellar for seven years?!
Evelyn: According to your father's estate trust, if Sarah had a living male heir, sixty percent of the Sterling Logistics voting stock transferred directly to her child upon his birth!
Lily: Mommy told me never to go near the floorboards, Daddy... She said a monster lived down there.
Robert: The only monster in this house is standing in front of me.
Evelyn pushed herself up from the marble floor, smoothing down her beige sweater as her panic transformed into sharp, desperate defense.
Evelyn: I did it for our family, Robert! If Sarah's baby got that sixty percent voting stock, your stepbrother Marcus would have taken over as CEO of Sterling Logistics! You would have been left with nothing!
Robert: I am the CEO because I worked twenty years for this company! I never wanted a stolen inheritance!
Evelyn: You were too weak to make the hard choices! Your father left forty million dollars in that trust fund!
Robert: You kept my nephew in the dark for seven years for forty million dollars?!
Toby snuggled closer to Robert's chest, his small body shaking with quiet sobs as he held his stuffed bear.
Toby: Daddy... is the mean lady going to put me back in the hole?
Robert: No, Toby. Nobody is ever going to put you in the dark again. I swear it on my life.
Robert pulled his smartphone from his pocket, his fingers tapping the screen with furious speed as he brought the device to his ear.
Evelyn: Who are you calling?! Robert, put that phone away!
Robert: I am calling Detective Vance and the state police. It is time to clear the rot out of this house.