Chapter 4: The Family That Bet Wrong
Gabriel found out who my father was the way you'd expect a man like Gabriel to find out — badly, publicly, and far too late.
When his lawyer looked into the divorce I'd filed, and traced the ownership of the SUV and the apartment, and discovered the name Remington attached to a four-star commander, Gabriel's confident swagger evaporated. There was no fighting it. Everything was mine, ironclad, structured years earlier by a man who builds contingencies for a living. Gabriel had no claim to the car, the apartment, or anything else, because he'd married a woman he believed was ordinary and never once bothered to find out that she wasn't.
Penelope, my mother-in-law, who'd treated me like hired help, who'd complained about a lunch reservation while I stood bleeding on a sidewalk with her grandson — she learned that the daughter-in-law she'd looked down on for years was the only reason her son had a car, an apartment, or a lifestyle at all. The contempt she'd spent years pouring on an "ordinary" woman had been aimed, the whole time, at the person who owned everything she'd been enjoying. It was, I'm told, a very quiet drive home for the Whitmores. They had no car and, soon, no apartment to drive to.
