Chapter 6
The next six hours were the worst of my life.
The social workers wouldn’t listen to anything we said.
They had Diane’s photos.
Her statement.
The police report from the night before where I was the problem.
Noah was hysterical when they led him out to their car.
“Mom! Don’t let them take me! Mom!”
I ran after them, screaming, until one of the social workers threatened to have me arrested.
Ethan showed up ten minutes later, white as a sheet.
“They took him,” I said. My voice didn’t sound like my own. “She did it. She actually did it.”
Ethan didn’t say anything.
He just turned and walked into the house.
I found him in the kitchen, holding a baseball bat he kept in the garage.
“Ethan? What are you doing?”
He walked toward the stairs.
“Ethan!”
Diane was in her bedroom, packing a suitcase.
She looked up when he burst in.
“There you are,” she said calmly. “About time you got here. We need to talk about visitation. I was thinking every other weekend—”
He raised the bat.
“WHERE IS HE, MOM?”
Her eyes flicked to the bat.
“Put that down, Ethan. You’re scaring me.”
“TELL ME WHERE THEY TOOK MY SON.”
“Put it down and we’ll talk.”
He stepped closer.
“I’m not asking again.”
For a second, I thought he’d hit her.
God help me, I wanted him to.
But then Diane did something unexpected.
She reached into her purse and pulled out a gun.
Small.
Silver.
A lady’s revolver.
She pointed it at his chest.
“I said put it down.”
The bat clattered to the floor.
“Mom…”
“You think I haven’t been waiting for this?” she said. Her voice was calm, steady, terrifying. “You think I didn’t know you’d eventually grow a spine? I’ve had this gun since your father died. I knew one day I’d need it. Either to protect myself from you… or to put you out of your misery.”
She gestured toward the door.
“Both of you. Sit on the bed.”
We did.
She kept the gun trained on us.
“Here’s how this is going to work,” she said. “Tomorrow morning, you will go to the bank. You will sign over every last penny of that inheritance to me. Every stock. Every bond. The deed to this house. The land. Everything. Then you will sign papers giving me full, permanent, sole custody of Noah. No visitation. No contact. Nothing. You will move out of this state and never come back. If you do… I shoot you both. And I tell the police you broke in here to kill me. That I defended myself. Who do you think they’ll believe?”
She smiled.
“After all… you do have a history of mental illness, don’t you, Ethan?”
He stared at her.
The woman who’d given birth to him.
Who’d raised him.
Who’d destroyed every good thing in his life.
“Why?” he whispered. “Why do you hate us so much?”
The question seemed to genuinely surprise her.
“Hate you? Oh, Ethan, I don’t hate you. I own you. There’s a difference. You were mine from the second you were born. Mine to shape. Mine to use. Mine to keep. And then that woman…”
She looked at me with pure, unadulterated venom.
“That woman came along. And she made you happy. She made you strong. She gave you Noah. And suddenly, you didn’t need me anymore. You were going to leave me. All alone in this big house. With nothing but your father’s ghost for company.”
She stood up, still holding the gun steady.
“I don’t know how to be alone, Ethan. I never have. Your father left. Sarah left. You were all I had left. And you were going to leave me too. So I made sure you couldn’t. Simple as that.”
The front door opened downstairs.
Sarah’s voice.
“Ethan? Emily? Are you guys here?”
Diane’s eyes narrowed.
“Who else knows about this?”
No one answered.
She grabbed Ethan’s phone from the nightstand and threw it against the wall.
Then mine.
Both shattered.
“Nobody moves,” she said. “Nobody makes a sound.”
We heard Sarah’s footsteps coming up the stairs.
“Hello?”
She was at the bedroom door now.
Diane pressed the gun harder against Ethan’s temple.
“Open it,” she whispered to me. “And if you say one word, I blow his brains out.”
I stood up slowly.
Walked to the door.
Turned the handle.
Sarah stood there, holding her phone.
“Hey, I was worried when you didn’t answer—”
She saw the gun.
Her eyes went wide.
She opened her mouth to scream.
Diane fired.
The bullet grazed Sarah’s shoulder.
She fell back against the hallway wall, clutching her arm, blood seeping through her fingers.
“Next one goes through his head,” Diane said calmly. “Get in here. Close the door.”
Sarah stumbled in, white with pain.
Diane gestured to the floor.
“Lie down next to the bed. Face down. Hands behind your back.”
She did.
Diane pulled a roll of duct tape from her nightstand drawer and tossed it to me.
“Tie her hands. Then tie Ethan to the bedpost. Do it right, or I shoot the boy when the social workers bring him back tomorrow.”
My hands were shaking so bad I could barely tear the tape.
When I was done, Diane stood over us.
Three people.
Her whole family.
All tied up or at gunpoint.
May you like
And she looked… peaceful.
“Now,” she said, sitting down in her armchair, gun still resting in her lap. “Let’s talk about how you’re going to sign everything over tomorrow. And then… well. Then we’ll see if I’m feeling generous.”
