I looked up at her, feeling a slight weight lift from my chest. “I’ve been through a lot in my life,” I said, “but this… this is just beginning.”
I hung up the phone and settled back against the bed, my thoughts swirling.
In the coming hours, everything would change. I wasn’t going to let them walk away with my life. I wasn’t going to let Clara get away with this betrayal. Victor’s carefully planned little scheme was about to come crashing down, and I was going to make sure of it.
The hospital room was quiet now, but the silence was filled with something more—something cold, something final. I wasn’t going to beg for my house, my car, or my retirement.
I was going to take it all back. And this time, no one would be able to stop me.
The next day, Clara and Victor would think they had won, but when they found out the truth, they would wish they had never crossed me.
I wasn’t just an old man waiting to die.
I was a man who had been wronged, and I was going to make them feel every ounce of regret for what they had done.
The game had just begun, and I was going to make sure I played it right to the end.
“My daughter called me from her wedding suite while I was lying in a hospital bed, still b:leeding from the ac:cident. “Don’t come tomorrow, Dad. Your house and car are sold. Goodbye.” I should have screamed. Instead, I laughed. “You forgot one thing, Clara.” Her voice turned cold. “What thing?” I looked at the forged papers on my phone and smiled, because the house she sold was never mine alone…
My daughter called while I was lying under hospital lights, my ribs wrapped tight, my left arm in a sling, and dried b:lood still crusted at my hairline. Her voice was bright, almost cheerful, as if she were announcing a vacation.
“Dad, I’m getting married tomorrow, but don’t come. Also, your car and house have been sold. Bye.”
For three seconds, I heard only the slow beep of the monitor beside me.
Then I said, “All right, Clara. But you left out one thing.”
She paused. “What do you mean?”
I laughed.
Not loudly at first. Just a tired, broken laugh that scraped through my chest and made the nurse glance at me from the doorway. Because the house she had sold was actually not mine to sell.
And neither was the car.
Clara had always thought I was weak. After her mother d:ied, I raised her alone, worked nights, cooked breakfast half-asleep, paid for her college, paid off her credit cards twice, and pretended not to notice when she rolled her eyes at my old jacket or called my small accounting office “depressing.”
