Chapter 6 - The Fall of the Matriarch
Interrogation room B was identical to the one we had just left, save for the massive two-way mirror mounted on the back wall.
Through the glass, I could see my mother sitting at the metal table. She was still wearing her immaculate cream silk suit, her pearls resting neatly against her collarbone, looking entirely out of place in a police precinct holding cell. Her high-priced defense attorney, a slick-looking man with silver hair and a tailored charcoal suit, was whispering something into her ear.
Detective Vance unlocked the door and pulled it open.
Claire stayed outside in the hallway, protected and out of the line of fire, while I walked in right behind Detective Vance and Assistant State’s Attorney Hayes.
The heavy metal door slammed shut behind us with a loud, final clank.
My mother looked up, expecting to see a clerk delivering documents for her restraining order. When her dark eyes landed on me, standing tall beside the lead investigator, her smug, confident expression fractured instantly.
“Ethan?” Mom blinked, her posture stiffening. She turned to her lawyer with an incredulous laugh. “Counselor, what is my son doing in here? This is a private legal proceeding!”
Her attorney looked down at the paperwork Detective Vance dropped onto the table—the arrest warrant, the forensic pharmacy audit, and the certified wire-transfer logs from Silver Oak Holdings.
“Mrs. Falcone,” her lawyer said slowly, adjusting his glasses and staring at the warrant with sudden, intense discomfort. “Did you... did you disclose to my office that there was an active criminal investigation into your financial accounts?”
“Of course not!” Mom snapped, her voice rising in sharp panic. “Because there is no investigation! My son is just harassing me because his wife is mentally unstable!”
Detective Vance stepped forward, slapping a pair of cold steel handcuffs down onto the table right in front of her pearls.
“Diane Falcone, you are under arrest for felony financial embezzlement, fraudulent acquisition of controlled substances, and criminal chemical endangerment,” Vance recited smoothly, his voice devoid of all emotion. “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”
The room went dead silent.
Mom stared at the handcuffs as if they were venomous snakes. Slowly, she lifted her gaze from the table, locking her eyes onto mine with a look of pure, unadulterated betrayal.
“You did this,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “After everything I sacrificed for you... after I raised you alone... after I came to your house to save you from that worthless, broken wife of yours... you put me in handcuffs?”
“You didn't come to save us, Mom,” I said, my voice as cold and hard as granite. “You came to conquer us. You poisoned my wife, you stole my money, and you tried to steal my son.”
“I am your mother!” she shrieked, the veneer of aristocratic dignity finally shattering completely as she pounded her fist against the metal table. “You owe me everything! Without me, you wouldn't even have that engineering degree! Without me, you’d be nothing!”
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“No, Mom,” I replied, turning toward the door without looking back. “Without you, I’m finally free.”
I walked out of the interrogation room, leaving her screaming behind the glass, her expensive pearls bouncing uselessly against her chest as the cold steel bracelets snapped shut around her wrists.
