Chapter 13 - The Kneeling in the Rain
Following the conclusion of the trial, I walked down the grand granite steps of the federal courthouse into a cold autumn drizzle. Hundreds of reporters and photographers swarmed the plaza, their flashbulbs illuminating the grey afternoon as they shouted questions about Vanguard's future.
I walked past the media line toward my waiting armored limousine, completely ignoring the noise and chaos around me. Suddenly, two figures broke through the police barricades, falling onto their knees on the wet concrete directly in front of my car's front bumper.
It was Edward and Evelyn, soaked to the bone, their hands trembling as they pressed their foreheads against the wet granite pavement. Evelyn was wailing hysterically, clutching her chest, while Edward wept openly, his dignity completely annihilated.
"Lucas, please... have mercy on your own flesh and blood!" Edward cried, looking up with red, swollen eyes. "We have no money for food, the motel is kicking us out tonight, and the entire world treats us like monsters!"
"You are monsters, Edward," I said, stopping three feet from them, looking down with neither hatred nor warmth. "You sold your child's soul for a con artist's smile, and you only regret it because the con artist took your wallet with him."
"Lucas, my baby, I gave birth to you!" Evelyn screamed, reaching out to touch my polished leather shoe with her trembling fingers. "I carried you for nine months! You cannot let your own mother freeze to death on the street while you live in a hundred-million-dollar penthouse!"
I stepped back, keeping my distance, the rain beading off my coat as the entire press corps filmed the devastating scene in complete silence. "You gave birth to me, Evelyn, but you never raised me; you fed my cousin, you celebrated his bought achievements, and you smashed the only thing I ever asked you to be proud of."
"We will do anything, Lucas!" Edward begged, pressing his hands together in prayer. "We will work as janitors in your warehouses, we will scrub the floors of your office, just give us a small room and enough money to buy bread!"
"My company employs thousands of honest, hardworking men and women who earned their positions through integrity and sweat," I replied, my voice carrying across the entire silent plaza. "I do not hire parasites who butcher their own families for profit."
I pulled a small leather pouch from my coat pocket and tossed it onto the wet concrete between them. The pouch opened, spilling out the jagged, twisted metal pieces of the gold winged runner figurine that Edward had crushed twelve years ago.
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"Here is your inheritance from me, Edward," I said coldly. "Sell the scrap metal for twenty dollars; it is twenty dollars more than you ever gave me on the night you threw me into the storm."
I opened the door of my limousine, stepped inside, and closed the soundproof door, leaving the two broken parents kneeling in the rain, clutching the shattered pieces of the trophy they had destroyed.
