Whispers of Revenge

Receipt

დ Rosalie დ

I stayed in my father’s office until the light outside turned from gray to black. The withdrawal receipt lay on the desk in front of me, and every time I looked at it, my anger sharpened. I couldn’t understand it, no matter how many times I tried. Why would she give the money away? Was she hoarding it in some secret account?

That didn’t make sense.

So, I kept digging. The bank folder was thicker than I expected. And even though most of it was old papers, deposit slips, loan documents, and statements, buried between them were newer pages. Pages were folded badly and shoved into the file without any care. I spread them out one by one. I scanned the dates. The amounts. The account numbers. And that is when I started putting the pieces of the puzzle together.

Transfers.

Not to a utility company. Not to a hospital. Not to a pharmacy. But to another private account. So many receipts. All to the same account. The amounts weren’t identical. The dates weren’t either. But it was close enough for me to put together a pattern. A cold wave moved through me as I opened my banking app and pulled up my own transfer history. I checked the dates. The amounts. Again and again. The pattern became impossible to ignore. Every time I had sent money, my mother had moved most of it somewhere else.

For months.

I checked older records, going back further than I wanted to. My neck ached and my eyes burned. The house around me settled deeper into the night, and still I kept turning pages. Months became years. Not all the way back, but long enough. Long enough for the truth to stop looking like panic and start looking like obedience.

My mother had been giving the money away.

She wasn’t spending it. She wasn’t losing it. She wasn’t even saving it. She had been giving it away while she let the house rot around her. While she skipped food. While she sat in a kitchen with unpaid bills and called it managing. I leaned back in the chair and stared at the desk. This wasn’t carelessness. This was something fixed in place. Something repeated until it had become normal. Someone had trained her into this. Or frightened her into it. Or owned enough of her that she kept doing it even now, sick and dying in this house.

Who?

I looked again at the account number on one of the slips. No name. Just digits and the bank. Raven Hollow Bank. I shut my laptop harder than I needed to and pushed back from the desk. She had been handing it over to someone else while I kept sending more. I grabbed the transfer slips and left the office. The house was dim except for the weak lamp in the living room. My mother sat curled into the corner of the sofa with a blanket over her legs. She looked up when I walked in, and the second she saw my face, something in her expression changed. She knew. I stopped in front of her and held up the papers.

“What is this?” her eyes flicked to the slips and then away.

“Rosalie—”

“No,” I snapped. My voice cut across hers so sharply she fell silent. “What is this?” I repeated. She pushed the blanket aside and sat up slower than she meant to.

“You shouldn’t have been going through those files,” a short laugh escaped me.

“That’s your answer?” I demanded, and her lips tightened.

“It’s my business, Rosalie,”

“Is it? Is it really your business when I send you money to cover everything you need, and you are just…just what, mother? Giving it away?” she didn’t say a word, and the anger that had been sizzling inside of me threatened to break free. “I have been sending you money for years. Enough to keep this house standing. Enough to keep food in the kitchen and heat in the radiators. Enough to make sure you never had to live like this,” her face paled even further, but I couldn’t stop. I needed to know the truth. I needed answers. “And every time I sent it, you handed it over to someone else,” her breathing changed, and I stared her down, determined.

“It wasn’t like that,” she whispered. I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Then tell me what it was like!” I crossed my arms, but my mother remained silent. “Who?” I demanded again. “Who have you been giving my money to?” and again.

“I have my reasons, Rosalie,”

“That isn’t a name. I want to know who,”

“You don’t understand,”

“No, mother, I don’t understand why you would live like this by choice. I don’t understand why you would let this house fall apart around you. I don’t understand why you would lie to me every month while I kept trying to help you,” tears filled her eyes, but they did nothing for me.

Not tonight.

“Please,” she murmured. That single word only made me angrier.

“Please, what? Please stop asking questions. Please keep sending money so you can keep feeding whoever this is while you sit here in the dark and call it surviving?”

“It isn’t that simple,”

“Then make it simple and tell me the truth,” she shook her head once, but I saw the fear that flashed in her eyes. Real fear. The type of fear I had seen before. It wasn’t fear of me. She feared something else. Possibly the truth. I stared at her and felt something cold settle into place. “You are protecting someone,” I realized, and her eyes closed. That was answer enough. Disgust hit so hard I had to look away from her. “Unbelievable,”

“Rosalie, listen to me—”

“No, I am done listening to half-truths and pathetic excuses,” I uncrossed my arms and dropped the slips onto the coffee table. They slid across the surface, and I scoffed. “You let me think you were drowning because you had no choice…and I kept thinking I wasn’t sending enough,”

“Rosalie…I didn’t want you dragged into this,”

“Into what?” I demanded. My mother once again shook her head, and I stepped back. The sudden need to be far away from her was overwhelming. It wasn’t exactly a new feeling for me. I had felt this way once upon a time. Back then, I had run. This time, I knew I couldn’t. Still, I grabbed my keys and walked out before I said something ugly. Before I could allow the memories to drag me down. The cold air hit me, but I ignored the chill as I hurried to my car. I slammed the door shut and drove. All I knew was that if my mother wouldn’t tell me who had been bleeding her dry, I would find out myself.

And when I did, I would make them regret ever touching what was mine.

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