Formal.
Financial.
Marcus lunged for the phone, but Sophia moved it out of reach.
“You told them Elena gave you frontline clinical insight,” she said. “You let them assume she supported your product. You used her career while making sure your own family thought she was nothing important.”
“I never said nothing important.”
“You called her useless.”
Marcus’s face reddened.
My mother closed her eyes.
My father looked at me. “Did you know he was using your work?”
“No.”
Marcus turned to me. “Come on. You answered some questions. We’re family.”
I held his gaze. “Family is not consent.”
The kitchen went still.
He looked away first.
Then his phone started buzzing on the table.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
He ignored it until the fourth call. When he looked at the screen, the color left his face. His hand shook as he answered, and because panic makes people clumsy, the call came through on speaker.
“Marcus,” a man’s voice said. “I’m going to be direct. We’re out.”
Marcus grabbed the phone. “Eric, listen—”
“No. I already listened. That’s the problem. After what happened at your dinner, and after comparing notes with Sophia and two other people who were there, I can’t put money behind you. If your closest family can’t trust how you represent them, I can’t ask a fund to trust how you represent patients, doctors, or hospitals.”
The line ended.
Nobody moved.
Marcus sat down hard.
For a strange second, I expected to feel triumphant.
I didn’t.
Revenge fantasies are clean. Real consequences are not. They have parents at kitchen tables, fiancées with bare ring fingers, brothers staring at phones like they might reverse time if they look hard enough.
Sophia spoke next.
“I postponed the wedding,” she said.
My mother inhaled sharply.
Marcus stared at her. “You’re ending us over one party?”
Sophia shook her head. “No. I’m stepping back because the party showed me a pattern I had been trying not to see. You lied about your company. You lied by implication about your sister. And even after everything came out, your first instinct was still to make Elena responsible for cleaning up your image.”
Marcus rubbed both hands over his face.
“I was under pressure.”
I asked, “To be what?”