Jackson came halfway out of his seat.
“Mom, what are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about what happened in my bedroom this morning.”
Natalie shook her head.
“Not this again.”
I reached up and removed the silver wig.
Gasps filled the room.
For the first time that day, I did not feel ashamed of my bare head.
I felt powerful.
“This was done to me while I slept,” I said. “My wedding dress was destroyed, my jewelry was taken, and this note was left beside my bed.”
I unfolded Natalie’s note and read it aloud.
When I finished, silence filled the ballroom.
Natalie laughed sharply.
“She wrote that herself. Can’t you see what she’s doing? She’s obsessed with Jackson.”
Marcus stepped forward.
“We have security records showing you entering Mrs. Carter’s home at 1:43 this morning and leaving at 3:16.”
“I told you—I went to collect a garment bag.”
“The hallway recording shows you leaving her bedroom with her jewelry box.”
Natalie’s face went pale.
Jackson turned toward her.
“Is that true?”
“No. Of course not.”
Rebecca placed a tablet on the table.
The video began to play.
There was Natalie, moving through my hallway.
She glanced over her shoulder before entering my bedroom.
More than an hour later, she emerged carrying my jewelry box and the black bag that contained the clippers.
The entire ballroom watched.
Natalie stopped pretending.
Her expression hardened.
“You were never going to let us live our own lives,” she snapped at me.
“I was giving you one hundred twenty million dollars.”
“Yes, and you made sure we had to keep smiling at you to get it!”
A stunned murmur spread through the guests.
Jackson looked as though someone had struck him.
“So you did it?” he asked.
Natalie turned to him.
“You don’t understand. She controls everything. The wedding, the company, the family. I was trying to make her stay away for one day.”
“You shaved my mother’s head.”
“It was hair. It grows back.”
“And her jewelry?”
“I was going to return it.”
“After the transfer?”
Natalie’s eyes flashed.
“That money was supposed to be ours!”
The words echoed through the ballroom.
Not his.
Not their future.
Ours.
Jackson slowly removed his wedding ring and placed it on the table.
“No,” he said. “It was never yours.”
