The Funeral Ransom
The next two days passed in a fog. Thaddius took on all expenses. Kyrie didn’t show up. He barricaded himself in the apartment, didn’t answer calls, and seemed to have vanished from the face of the earth.
The day of the funeral was gray and windy. Not many people gathered at the cemetery. Zanab stood by the casket, looking at her mother’s peaceful face. The pastor began to read a prayer. I closed my eyes, listening to the monotone chant when the cemetery silence was broken by the screech of brakes.
A black SUV pulled up to the gates. Kyrie stepped out. He was clean-shaven, wearing an expensive suit he’d bought with money I had saved for a vacation. Next to him scurried a frail little man with a leather briefcase tucked under his arm—a lawyer.
“Stop the ceremony!” he shouted loudly.
People turned around. The pastor fell silent. Thaddius stepped forward, blocking his path. “You dare show your face here? Get out before I order security to bury you in the next plot.”
“Easy there, Uncle,” Kyrie smirked. “We’re operating within the law.”
The lawyer immediately popped out from behind his back and opened a folder. “My client, Mr. Kyrie Payton, is the legal spouse of Zanab Griggs Payton. Furthermore,” the lawyer pulled out a paper with a notary seal, “Three years ago, Ms. Eta Griggs signed a general power of attorney to her son-in-law, granting him the right to manage all property and burial arrangements. The POA is valid for another two years.”
I stared at the paper, and my legs went weak. I remembered. Three years ago, Kyrie wanted a car loan. He tricked Mama into signing a “formality.”
“This doesn’t give him the right to disrupt a funeral,” Thaddius spat.
“It does,” Kyrie interjected, adjusting his tie. “I demand the process be halted and the body transferred to the city morgue until the dispute is settled.”
A murmur of horror went through the crowd.
“You monster,” I whispered. “Why?”
Kyrie walked right up to me. “It’s very simple, Zanab,” he whispered. “You are going to sign a deed of gift for your mama’s old plot of land out in Oakwood Heights right here on the hood of my lawyer’s car. You refuse, and your mother sits in a morgue cooler for another month.”
“The land?” I asked, confused. “That overgrown lot with the shack? It’s worth nothing.”
“Maybe I want to grow tomatoes,” Kyrie smiled smugly.
Thaddius, standing nearby, suddenly frowned. He checked his phone. “Zanab, he isn’t planning to grow tomatoes. Yesterday, the governor signed the final plan for the new federal interstate expansion. It goes right through Oakwood Heights. The compensation for your lot will be around $1.2 million.”
The crowd gasped. Kyrie knew. He had known for months.
“So what?” Kyrie snapped. “We’re family. Sign it or I swear this coffin goes back to the city right now.”
“It’s going nowhere,” came Thaddius’s calm voice. He signaled his security. “Zanab, revoke the POA. Now.”
I straightened up. For the first time in days, I felt not pain, but a cold, ringing rage. “I revoke the power of attorney right now in front of witnesses.”
Kyrie’s lawyer turned pale and snapped his folder shut. “In that case, we have no legal grounds to interfere.”
Kyrie screamed as security escorted them away, but the funeral proceeded. Yet, as the dirt hit the coffin, I knew this wasn’t over.
We went to my apartment immediately after. The door was broken. Inside, it was a battlefield. Furniture overturned, wallpaper torn. Kyrie had taken everything of value. But on the table, he left a folder marked: To my beloved wife.
Inside were not letters, but debt notices. $150,000 in loans taken out in my name over three years.
“Where did the money go?” I whispered, horrified. “We lived on pasta.”
Thaddius’s lawyer traced the money. “Recipient: Lache Williams. Owner of Lache’s Lux Bar, an elite beauty salon downtown.”
I looked at the social media photos. There was my husband, smiling proudly next to a glamorous woman in furs—his mistress.
“I’m going there,” I said, staring at my reflection in the cracked hallway mirror. “I want to look into this business lady’s eyes.”
The Mistress and the Diary
We walked into the salon. Lache came out, striking, well-groomed, and heavily pregnant.
“Ah, the legal wife,” she smirked. “I thought you’d come sooner.”
“Where is he?” I asked.
“No idea. The coward ran off. But the baby and I will manage.” She rubbed her belly. “Of course, it’s Kyrie’s. We’re a real family.”
She tossed a folder on the table. Photos of me screaming during arguments, orchestrated by Kyrie. “We’ll prove you’re mentally unstable. Kyrie will be your guardian and control your uncle’s inheritance.”
Defeated, I asked Thaddius to drive me to Mama’s apartment. I needed to say goodbye properly.
Amidst the boxes, I hugged Mama’s old dressmaker’s mannequin, Miss Hattie. My fingers felt a loose seam. Inside the stuffing, I found a small bundle—a thick notebook. Mama’s diary.
I read the entries, and my blood ran cold.
April 12th. He was here again. Brought me new heart pills… I took one… chest burned like fire… I saw him pouring something in the kitchen… If I die, daughter, know this wasn’t my heart. He switched the pills.
Kyrie hadn’t just stolen from me. He had murdered my mother for the land.
I rushed to the bathroom cabinet. The blue bottle of pills was gone. Only a dust ring remained. Without the bottle, the police said it was just the “ramblings of a sick woman.”
I felt helpless until I saw Kyrie on TV that night. He was crying on a talk show, playing the victim, supported by his mother, Ms. Bernice, who wailed about my cruelty.
Ms. Bernice. She had a key to Mama’s apartment. She must have removed the bottle.
I called her. “I have a proposal. 5 million dollars. But I need the truth.”
She agreed to meet. Greed battled with hatred in her eyes. She admitted to “throwing away a bag” Kyrie gave her but denied knowing it was poison. But in her hatred for Lache, she gave me the weapon I needed.
“That baby ain’t his,” she spat. She handed me an old medical file from Kyrie’s childhood. “Epidemic Parotitis complicated by bilateral orchitis. Complete azoospermia. Irreversible infertility.”
Kyrie was sterile. He killed for an heir that wasn’t his.
The Fire
I called Kyrie. “Meet me at the Plaza Hotel. Bring Lache.”
At the meeting, Kyrie was arrogant, demanding millions. Lache rubbed her belly, sneering.
I slid the medical file across the table. “Read it, Kyrie.”
The silence was deafening as he read. “This… this is a fake,” he whispered.
“Mama hid it to protect you,” I said. “You’re sterile. Whose baby is that?”
Kyrie turned to Lache. The look on his face was terrifying. Lache crumbled. “You’re a broke loser anyway! Uncle Elroy sold you the poison, not me! You killed her!”
Thaddius signaled the police, but in the chaos, Kyrie escaped through a bathroom window.
He didn’t run far. He went to the bank, drained the last of my savings, and then he came for me.
I was at the apartment, sewing a dress from the torn velvet curtains—my “Phoenix dress”—streaming my story live to thousands of people.
Then came the smell of gasoline.
“Burn, witch!” Kyrie screamed from the hallway.
Flames roared under the door. The heat was instant. I grabbed the diary and my phone. The door handle was red hot. I ran to the window. Fifth floor.
“Jump!” someone yelled from the courtyard.
I climbed onto the icy ledge. The fire was licking my heels. I jumped. I hit the fourth-floor balcony roof hard, sliding toward the edge, my fingers clawing at the ice until I gripped the railing.
Below, the police dragged a laughing, soot-smeared Kyrie to a squad car. “I solved everything! No apartment, no evidence!” he screamed maniacally.
The Final Trap
Three days later, Kyrie was pleading insanity. He used stolen jewelry from his own mother, Ms. Bernice, to hire Reginald Sterling, a shark of a lawyer.
Then Ms. Bernice showed up at my temporary apartment, destitute and begging. Kyrie had robbed her blind.
“I’ll help you,” I told her. “But first, we go to the cemetery.”
I forced her to kneel at Mama’s grave while Thaddius filmed. She confessed everything—Kyrie’s sanity, his plan, the poison. It was the nail in his coffin.
I handed her an envelope. She tore it open, expecting a check. It was a bus ticket to Tupelo, Mississippi.
“There’s an old house there with a stove,” I said cold-heartedly. “You wanted shelter? You got it.”
Six months later, the trial captivated the city. I walked into the courtroom in a burgundy suit of my own design, looking like a queen.
The video of Ms. Bernice played. Kyrie covered his face. The insanity defense crumbled.
“25 years,” the judge declared.
Before I left my old life behind forever, I visited Kyrie one last time. Behind the glass partition, he looked hollow.
“I came to settle accounts,” I said, sliding a paper through the slot.
It was an invoice.
Dinner Service for Thaddius Vance: $800. Waitress and Chef fees included.
“I deducted this from the sale of your car,” I smiled. “We are even.”
Kyrie screamed as the guards dragged him away. I walked out into the sun.
I drove to the burned-out apartment, now renovated. Above the door hung a new sign: “ETA – Bespoke Fashion.”
I cut the red ribbon. I had walked through fire, and I had risen.
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