Chapter 11 - The Canceled Destination Wedding and the In-Law Civil War
By Saturday morning, the consequences of Daniel’s financial collapse detonated across the entire Hayes family network.
The luxury boutique resort in Cabo San Lucas, having received no payment to replace the canceled $8,500 deposit for Megan’s bridal suite and having received no confirmation for the $15,000 group banquet catering balance, officially canceled the reservation and released the dates to another party.
Megan’s fiancé, a sensible young accountant from a conservative family who had assumed the Hayes family was independently wealthy, discovered that Megan had run up sixteen thousand dollars of personal debt on dresses and private flights expecting Daniel to pay the bills. Upon realizing that Daniel was completely broke and that the family’s wealth was an elaborate illusion funded entirely by me, the fiancé broke off the engagement, packed his bags, and called off the wedding.
What followed was an all-out civil war inside Patricia’s suburban living room.
I received a frantic phone call at noon from Senior Hayes, who was practically screaming into the receiver over the sound of sobbing and shouting in the background.
"Claire! You have to come over here!" Senior Hayes yelled. "Megan is throwing plates at Daniel, Patricia has locked herself in the bathroom threatening to take pills, and Kyle is trying to physically fight his brother in the front yard! You’re the only one who can stop this!"
"Mr. Hayes," I answered coldly from the terrace of my hotel suite. "I am no longer a member of your family’s financial rescue squad. What you are experiencing is the natural consequence of eight years of parasitism, entitlement, and arrogance. You wanted Daniel to be the master of his household. You wanted him to put me in my place. Now you can enjoy the fruits of his leadership."
I hung up the phone and blocked Senior Hayes’s number.
According to the local police blotter that evening, municipal police officers were dispatched to Patricia’s residence at two-thirty in the afternoon to break up a physical altercation between Kyle and Daniel over a broken laptop containing crypto passwords.
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Kyle had accused Daniel of stealing his future. Daniel had accused Kyle of being an unemployable parasite who had ruined his life. Patricia had stood on the front lawn, screaming at the neighbors that her sons were being persecuted by an evil, heartless woman.
The entire neighborhood watched as the proud, arrogant Hayes family was exposed for exactly what they had always been: a collection of bitter, entitled grifters who had cannibalized their own golden goose.
