Part 3: Every Last Lie
“What do you mean, ‘What did I do?’” Beatrice snapped into the phone. “I brought my friends here just like I told you I would to help promote our restaurant!”
Lucas exhaled sharply, struggling for breath.
“Mom, it is not our restaurant.”
Beatrice froze in the middle of the crowded room.
“Stop joking around with me, Lucas.”
“I am not joking! I never put a single dollar into that business! The restaurant belongs entirely to Camilla!”
The women around her started trading uncomfortable, confused glances.
Beatrice tightened her grip on the phone until her knuckles turned white.
“But you prepared the legal transfer documents!”
“Yes, I drafted them myself, but Camilla never agreed to sign anything over to me!”
A wealthy woman sitting near Beatrice leaned over and asked in a sharp whisper.
“So why on earth did you tell us this luxury establishment was practically yours already?”
Beatrice pretended not to hear and spoke frantically into the phone.
“Lucas, explain to them right now that you are taking out loans to save this restaurant because it is going bankrupt!”
Another awkward silence stretched across the line.
“Mom… that is a lie, too.”
The color drained from Beatrice’s face in an instant.
“What did you say?”
“The restaurant is not bankrupt, and it never was!”
Nobody in the private room dared take another sip of their drink.
Lucas kept rambling nervously over the speakerphone, unraveling his own lies.
“I had massive personal debts, Mom! I needed money desperately, which is why I took funds directly from the commercial account!”
“How much money?” Beatrice demanded, her voice cracking.
“A lot…”
I stepped forward and cut into the call.
“It was nearly forty thousand dollars in unauthorized transfers and personal expenses, all of which are documented.”
Lucas went completely silent.
One of Beatrice’s closest friends stood up and asked loudly.
“And what about that young girl you were boasting about earlier, Beatrice?”
Beatrice glared at her friend in pure rage, but Lucas was already caught in his own trap.
“Yes, there was someone else,” Lucas confessed miserably. “Part of the money went toward luxury hotel rooms, expensive gifts, and trips.”
A loud murmur of shock rippled through the crowd. Beatrice seemed utterly unable to process that her own son was dismantling her entire fake empire in under five minutes.
“You lied to me, Lucas,” she whispered in disbelief.
“I needed you to pressure Camilla into giving me control of the business! I thought if I gained legal access, I could use the restaurant’s revenue to fix my debts!”
One of the prominent socialites rose from her chair.
“Beatrice, you explicitly told all of us that your son was the sole owner of this venue!”
“I was only repeating what he explained to me!” Beatrice shouted back defensively.
“You also promised that you were paying for this entire banquet!” another woman added angrily, snatching up the massive bill. “Who is going to pay for all this expensive food and wine now?”
Beatrice looked frantically toward the exit, but I stepped smoothly into her path.
“The person who organized the event, placed the massive orders, and publicly announced that they were treating everyone should be held legally responsible. If you believe Lucas should cover it, you are welcome to work that out with him.”
Beatrice raised the phone to her mouth again.
“Lucas, pay this bill right now!”
“I cannot, Mom.”
“What do you mean you cannot?”
“I do not have any money left!”
The line went dead as Lucas hung up.
For several long seconds nobody moved, and the room was suffocatingly quiet.
I calmly reached down and pulled back the receipt on the silver tray to reveal the paperwork underneath.
“There is something else you all should know,” I said clearly.
I handed Beatrice the certified copy of my official court ruling.
“As of this morning, the final decree was signed. Lucas and I are officially divorced, and we are no longer husband and wife.”
Beatrice blinked rapidly, staring at the seal on the document.
“That… that cannot be real.”
“It is entirely real, Beatrice. Legally speaking, we are no longer related in any way, and even if we were, that would never give your family the right to walk into my business, consume thousands of dollars in high-end goods, and leave without paying.”
Beatrice looked down at the court papers, then at her furious friends, and finally toward the glass doors.
“Camilla, please… we are family. Do not do this to me.”
“When you referred to me as nothing more than a simple servant in front of thirty-eight people today, were we family then?”
She opened her mouth, but no sound came out.
“When Lucas was stealing funds from my company account to finance his mistress, were we family then?”
Silence.
“When you brought legal papers to force me out of my own business, were we family?”
Beatrice’s friends began physically stepping away from her, washing their hands of the whole affair.
“I only came today because Beatrice assured us everything was taken care of!” one woman declared loudly.
“Me too!” another chimed in. “I am certainly not getting dragged into legal trouble because of her family’s lies!”
Beatrice began to cry real tears of panic.
“My son deceived me, too!”
“You can explain your side of the story to the proper authorities,” I replied firmly. “But the outstanding debt for this meal remains unpaid.”
Gavin stepped up beside me.
“Should I call security, Camilla?”
“Just to keep the peace, Gavin. Nobody is going to be harmed, but if anyone refuses to pay their portion or attempts to leave without providing full identification, please dial the police immediately.”
Once Beatrice realized I would not back down, she started begging desperately.
“Just write it off as advertising, Camilla! This restaurant makes so much money, so twenty thousand dollars is not going to ruin you!”
Her desperate plea confirmed everything I had ever suspected about how she saw me. My endless hours of hard work meant nothing to her. The fresh ingredients, my staff’s hard-earned wages, and my skill were worthless in her eyes, simply because she believed I could work harder to earn the money back for her convenience.
“No,” I said coldly.
Beatrice buried her face in her hands. Within minutes, her friends were arguing fiercely among themselves, demanding that she settle the tab or insisting on paying only for what each of them had eaten. The admiration that had surrounded her all afternoon dissolved into bitter resentment.
In the end, we had to call the local police when Beatrice refused to cooperate and several women tried to force their way past the host stand. I handed the officers the master receipt, the detailed order logs, and the high-definition security footage of Beatrice ordering the menu items. The police took formal statements and collected identification from every person present.
I did not raise my voice, nor did I demand that anyone be dragged away in handcuffs, because there was no need for a dramatic scene. I simply wanted Beatrice to learn that the word “family” was not a blank check to steal from me.
After several women paid their individual shares and others signed formal police acknowledgments of the debt, the dining room finally emptied.
Gavin shook his head in absolute awe.
“I have truly never witnessed anything like that in my entire career.”
“Neither have I, Gavin.”
Later that evening, while the kitchen crew was deep-cleaning the line, I got a follow-up call from the investigating detective. Down at the station, Beatrice was claiming that she fully believed her son was going to cover the bill.
While I was explaining the financial background to the detective, a heavy knock sounded at my office door.
It was Lucas. He walked in wearing a wrinkled suit, pale and completely broken.
“Did you really report my mother to the police, Camilla?”
“Your mother hosted an extravagant banquet that cost over twenty-three thousand dollars and then refused to pay for it.”
Lucas began pacing back and forth across the hardwood floor.
“She is completely insane! Why on earth did you let her order so much food?”
“Because she is a grown adult who publicly announced to dozens of witnesses that she was paying for the entire party.”
Lucas clutched his hair, his face full of panic.
“This is going to ruin me even further!”
I stared at him in disbelief. He did not ask whether his mother was okay, nor how I was feeling after everything that had happened. He was still entirely focused on himself.
“Why would her bill ruin you, Lucas?”
“Because the police are already auditing all the bank records and money transfers!”
“You mean the money you stole from my restaurant account?”
“It was not all spent on the other woman!” he blurted out defensively.
I stayed perfectly still, glancing down at my desk, where the phone call with the detective was still connected on speaker.
“Then tell me where the rest of the stolen money went, Lucas.”
Lucas slumped heavily into an armchair and covered his face with his hands.
“I was sending more than half of it directly to my mother…”
I felt the temperature in the room drop at once.
“How much did you send her?”
“More than twenty thousand dollars…”
Gavin, who was wiping down the pass outside my office, stopped dead in his tracks.
“Why were you sending her my business money?”
Lucas groaned, refusing to meet my eyes.
“For designer bags, expensive clothes, luxury trips, and hosting fancy lunches for her social friends! She kept saying that since your restaurant was making so much money, it was absurd that she had to live like an ordinary woman.”
“Did she know where that money was coming from?”
Lucas took a long time to answer.
“Yes…”
“And did she know about your mistress the entire time?”
“Yes…”
“Since when?”
“Almost from the very beginning…”
“Why did she stay silent about it?”
He finally looked up at me with hollow eyes.
“Because she told me that as long as I kept giving her money, she would never tell you what I was doing.”
