Chapter 9 - The Kensington Civil WarPoverty is a disease that eats away at the soul, especially for those who have never had to work a day in their lives.
Three months after their eviction, the bond between Andrew and Margaret had completely disintegrated into a toxic, venomous war of survival. They were living in a cramped, mold-infested, one-bedroom apartment in a dangerous part of Queens. The Escalante lawyers had ensured that no reputable company would hire Andrew, leaving him to bounce between minimum-wage labor jobs that he inevitably lost due to his arrogance.
It was a freezing Friday evening. I was sitting in the back of my town car, parked in a dark alley across the street from a dingy, neon-lit pawn shop. Julian sat beside me, his hand resting comfortably over mine.
"You didn't have to come out here in the cold, Mariana," Julian said gently. "My people could have handled this."
"I needed to see it for myself, Julian," I replied, watching the entrance of the pawn shop through the window. "I need to see the final chapter."
A few minutes later, the door to the pawn shop swung open. Andrew stumbled out into the freezing rain. He looked fifty years old, his face hollow, his eyes sunken and desperate. He was clutching a few crumpled hundred-dollar bills in his shivering hands.
Suddenly, a woman came shrieking out of the alleyway, attacking him like a rabid animal. It was Margaret.
She looked unrecognizable. Her hair was a matted, gray mess, her clothes stained and torn. She threw herself at Andrew, clawing wildly at his face and grabbing for the money in his hands.
"Give it back to me!" Margaret shrieked, her voice echoing off the brick walls. "Those were my grandmother’s pearls, you ungrateful parasite! You stole them from my purse!"
"Get off me, you crazy old bat!" Andrew roared, violently shoving his own mother backward into the wet garbage bags piled against the wall. "I need this money! We have to pay rent, or they're throwing us out tomorrow! You don't do anything but sit in that filthy apartment and cry all day! I'm the only one keeping us alive!"
"You ruined us!" Margaret sobbed hysterically, sitting in the trash, pointing a trembling, accusing finger at her son. "You had a billionaire heiress in the palm of your hand, and you threw her away for that cheap, silicone trash Brenda! You are a failure, Andrew! You are a pathetic, worthless failure!"
Andrew stared at his mother, his face twisting with a mixture of profound self-hatred and burning rage. He didn't help her up. He didn't apologize. He simply turned his back on her and walked away into the freezing rain, clutching the few crumpled bills to his chest, leaving his mother sobbing in the garbage.
I rolled the tinted window up, sealing out the noise of their miserable existence.
"They destroyed themselves," Julian observed quietly, squeezing my hand. "You just gave them the rope."
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"And they hung themselves perfectly," I agreed, feeling a profound, absolute sense of closure wash over me. The cycle of abuse was permanently broken. The demons of my past were trapped in a hell of their own making, and they would never, ever escape it.
"Driver," I said, leaning back into the luxurious leather seats. "Take us home."
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