On My Birthday, My Parents Organized A Family Dinner With 100 Relatives Just To Publicly Disown
I leaned back in my leather chair. I looked at the leather binder sitting on my desk. The $400,000 bill Marcus had handed me.
«You want me to save you?» I asked.
«Yes,» Serena cried. «Yes, baby, please. We’re family.»
«Let’s look at the ledger,» I said, my voice sharpening. «You handed me a bill yesterday, Mom. $400,000. Do you remember what was on page 42?»
«What?» Serena stammered, confused. «I… I don’t know.»
«It was a line item for emotional distress,» I said. «Dad charged me $5,000 for the stress I caused you when I dropped my ice cream cone at Disney World in 1999. Do you remember that?»
«Tiana, please,» Serena wailed.
«Well, I have done some calculations of my own,» I continued. «And I think the emotional distress fee for abandoning your daughter, letting your husband humiliate her, and trying to steal her inheritance is a bit higher than $5,000. In fact, I think it costs exactly everything you have left.»
«Tiana, don’t be cruel,» Serena whispered. «This isn’t you. You’re a good girl.»
«I was a good girl,» I corrected. «Now I’m a solvent girl. And you are a bankrupt girl. Hunter is gone, Mom. The money is gone. And I am not a bank. I am an auditor. And I have found your account… lacking.»
«But what do we do?» Serena asked, her voice small and terrified like a child in the dark.
«You figure it out,» I said. «Just like you told me to figure it out when you left me in the rain. Sell your jewelry. Sell your designer dresses. Get a job. I hear the Waffle House is hiring for the night shift.»
«You can’t do this!» Serena screamed, the anger returning as the desperation failed. «You owe us!»
«I don’t owe you a damn thing,» I said.
I hung up the phone. I sat there for a moment, listening to the silence of my apartment. It didn’t feel heavy. It felt light. It felt like shedding a skin that had been too tight for 30 years.
But the game wasn’t over. Marcus was still standing.
I turned to my computer monitors. I pulled up the live feed from the security cameras inside Grace Community Church. Marcus was there. He was standing in the empty sanctuary, pacing back and forth on the pulpit. He looked manic. His tie was undone, his hair was disheveled. He was shouting at an empty room, rehearsing his sermon.
«They will forgive me,» he shouted at the empty pews, his voice echoing off the vaulted ceiling. «They have to forgive me. I am the Shepherd. I am the Bishop. It wasn’t my fault. It was the devil. It was Hunter. It was Tiana.»
He stopped pacing. He looked up at the stained glass window. «I need a miracle, Lord,» he whispered. «I need a sacrifice.»
He pulled out his phone. He started typing a mass text message. I watched the text appear on my screen as he typed it, intercepted by my software.
To all church members. From: Bishop Marcus. Urgent, Emergency Service of Reconciliation. Tomorrow at 10 a.m. We are facing a spiritual attack. The enemy has stolen from our treasury. But God has revealed a path to restoration. My daughter Tiana will be there to confess her part in this tribulation and to offer a seed of faith to restore the House of God. Bring your checkbooks. The Lord loves a cheerful giver.
I stared at the message. He was insane. He was actually going to try it. He was going to blame the theft on me or Hunter, but frame it as a spiritual attack, and then pressure the congregation to donate more money to cover the loss. And he was going to try to ambush me. He thought if he announced I would be there, I would be pressured to show up to clear my name. He thought he could use the peer pressure of 500 people to force me to sign the land deed.
He wanted a show. He wanted a confession.
I smiled. A slow, cold smile that didn’t reach my eyes. «You want Tiana to appear, Bishop?» I whispered to the screen. «You want a sacrifice? Okay, I’ll come.»
I picked up my phone and texted Agent Miller.
The target is organizing a gathering tomorrow morning. 10 a.m. He’s going to solicit funds to cover up the embezzlement. It’s wire fraud in real time.
We’ll be ready, Miller replied instantly. Do you want us to shut it down before it starts?
No, I typed back. Let him start. Let him get on that stage. Let him tell his lies. I want everyone to hear them. I want the choir to hear them. I want the deacons to hear them. I am coming to church. And I’m bringing the receipts.
I stood up and walked to my closet. I pushed aside the gray suits, the sensible cardigans, the good-girl clothes I had worn to try and please them. I reached into the back and pulled out a garment bag. I unzipped it.
Inside was a white suit. Not off-white. Not cream. Pure, blinding, stark white. Italian silk. Sharp shoulders. Wide legs. It was a power suit. It was the kind of suit a woman wore when she was about to take over a boardroom or burn down an empire.
I ran my hand over the fabric. Tomorrow, I wouldn’t be Tiana the Disappointment. I wouldn’t be Tiana the Scapegoat. Tomorrow, I was the Angel of Death. And Bishop Marcus was about to meet his maker.
The air inside the Sanctuary of Grace Community Church was stale, recycled, and thick with the scent of desperation. Five hundred people were packed into the pews, fanning themselves with glossy programs that bore my father’s smiling face. The local news crews were set up in the back, their camera lights cutting through the haze like searchlights in a prison yard.
I stood in the vestibule, watching the feed on my phone, my heart beating a slow, steady rhythm against my ribs. This was it. The final act.
On the raised pulpit, my father, Bishop Marcus Jenkins, was giving the performance of a lifetime. He wasn’t wearing his usual Sunday best. He had chosen a simple black suit. His tie loosened, his hair artfully disheveled to suggest a man who had been wrestling with angels all night. He gripped the sides of the podium, leaning forward, his voice a ragged baritone that vibrated in the floorboards.
«My brothers! My sisters!» Marcus groaned into the microphone, wiping genuine sweat from his brow. «We are in the valley of the shadow today. The enemy is at the gates. This ministry… This family… We are under a siege of spiritual wickedness.»
«Amens» rippled through the crowd, soft and sympathetic. They bought it. They bought the tired eyes and the trembling hands. They didn’t know the trembling was terror, not piety.
«My own daughter,» Marcus continued, his voice cracking perfectly on the word. «Tiana. The child I raised. The child I fed. She has allowed the spirit of greed to twist her heart. She has come to me with threats. She demands money. She demands payment for her silence. She holds our family hostage with lies and legal trickery.»
He paused, looking out over the crowd, locking eyes with the wealthiest donors in the front row.
«I have prayed for her!» Marcus shouted, his voice rising. «I have wept for her. But the devil does not sleep, and neither can we. We are facing a financial crisis because of this attack. The church accounts have been… frozen. By the enemy. To stop our good work. And now I must ask you, the faithful, to stand in the gap.»
He gestured to the ushers, who stepped forward with velvet collection buckets.
«We need a seed of faith,» Marcus pleaded. «We need a miracle offering. To pay the lawyers. To save the land. To save this house from the wolves who want to tear it down. I am asking for everything you can give. Empty your pockets. Write the check. Help me save my daughter from herself.»
I watched on my screen as people reached for their wallets. Elderly women opening purses. Businessmen pulling out checkbooks. He was robbing them in broad daylight using my name as the weapon.
It was time. I looked at Agent Miller on my right. He adjusted his FBI windbreaker and nodded. I looked at Director Vance of the IRS on my left. He checked his watch and snapped his briefcase shut.
«Let’s go to church,» I said.
I pushed open the heavy double doors. Boom! The sound of the doors hitting the back walls echoed like a gunshot. The organ player faltered. The ushers froze. Every single head in the room turned. The collective gasp sucked the air out of the room.
I didn’t walk in looking like the mousy accountant they remembered. I walked in wearing the white power suit. It was blinding. Stark architectural Italian wool that fit like armor. My hair was slicked back, sharp and severe. My lips were painted a deep blood red. I didn’t look like a daughter coming to apologize. I looked like a reckoning.
I started down the center aisle. My heels clicked against the hardwood floor with a sound that cut through the silence. Click, click, click. It was the sound of a countdown. Behind me, the flank of federal agents moved in formation, a wave of dark blue and gray crashing into the sanctuary.
The camera crews swung their lenses away from the pulpit and onto me. Marcus stopped speaking. The microphone dipped in his hand. His eyes bulged. He looked from me to the FBI agents, and I saw the blood drain from his face until he looked like a wax figure melting under the stage lights.
«Tiana…» he croaked, his voice amplified and distorted by the speakers.
I didn’t stop. I kept my eyes locked on him. I walked past my mother, Serena, in the front row. She stood up, her hand reaching out, her face a mask of horror.
«Tiana, baby, don’t,» Serena whispered, her voice trembling.
I didn’t even blink. I walked past her like she was a statue. I reached the steps of the stage. Two deacons, big men who doubled as security, stepped forward to block me. They looked uncertain, glancing back at Marcus for orders.
Agent Miller stepped in front of me. He didn’t raise his voice. He just opened his jacket, revealing the gold badge and the holstered sidearm.
