Frozen Retribution

Chapter7

CHAPTER 7 — The Face Slapped in Front of the Neighbors

By the time Marwan's car screeched to a stop outside Estate Eight, half the street had already found a reason to be outside — watering plants that didn't need it, walking dogs that had clearly already been walked, all of them angled just enough to see the gate.

Marwan didn't wait for the intercom. He hammered the buzzer with the flat of his hand, Handoko a step behind him, Ratna trailing with her cardigan clutched at her throat like armor.

The gate swung open on its own before the third buzz.

Bagas stood in the doorway in a plain white shirt, sleeves rolled, looking for all the world like a man who'd been expecting exactly this and had simply decided not to hurry.

"Bagas." Marwan's voice was pitched to carry, loud enough that Mrs. Park two houses down didn't even pretend to look away. "We need to talk. Inside. Now."

"We can talk right here," Bagas said pleasantly.

"This is a family matter."

"I'm not family anymore. You made sure to remind me of that yesterday, remember?" He leaned one shoulder against the doorframe, unhurried. "Say what you came to say, Pak Marwan. I have somewhere to be this afternoon."

Handoko shoved forward before his father could answer. "Don't play games. You hid this money before the divorce. Everyone knows it. You owe Lara half of that jackpot, and you know it."

"I bought the tickets after the divorce was finalized," Bagas said, calm as still water. "There's a timestamp on the purchase and a timestamp on the court filing. Anyone is welcome to compare them."

"Then you knew you were about to win!" Handoko's voice cracked with the particular desperation of a man watching a very specific number vanish from his future. "That's — that's practically theft!"

"It's called research," Bagas said, "and luck. Neither of which is illegal, as far as I'm aware."

Ratna finally found her voice, softer, angling for pity instead. "Bagas, sayang, we've known each other nine years. Whatever happened between you and Lara, we're still — we still care about you. Can't we discuss this like a family, over dinner, the way we always —"

"Chris isn't mine."

The words landed flat and total, cutting straight through her rehearsed softness. Ratna's mouth opened and nothing came out.

"You knew," Bagas continued, voice never rising, which somehow made it worse. "Didn't you, Bu Ratna? All those years I watched that boy grow up not looking a single thing like me, and you sat across the dinner table and let me believe genetics were simply strange." He reached into his coat and produced a single folded sheet of paper, holding it up — not close enough to read, just close enough for its shape and letterhead to be unmistakable. "Probability of paternity: zero percent. Signed, dated, notarized. Filed with the divorce paperwork you all rushed me through so fast none of you thought to actually read it."

The street had gone very quiet. Even the dogs seemed to have stopped pulling on their leashes.

"You're lying," Marwan said, but his voice had lost most of its volume.

"Ask your daughter," Bagas said. "She already knows. She's known since I called her the night before the divorce."

Every head on the street turned, as if choreographed, toward Lara — who had just arrived, breathless, having driven separately and clearly too late to stop what was already unfolding on the sidewalk.

"Lara," Marwan said, very slowly, "is this true?"

Lara's silence was its own confession.

"You knew?" Handoko's voice climbed into something almost shrill. "You knew and you let us go over there and make fools of ourselves demanding money for a child that isn't even —"

"Watch your mouth," Lara snapped, finally finding fury of her own, "he's still my son —"

"He's Kurnia's son," Bagas said mildly, and let that settle over the gathered street like snowfall. "Speaking of whom — I'm surprised he isn't here. You'd think a man might show up to defend the mother of his own child."

Mrs. Park, standing at the edge of her lawn with a watering can she'd long since stopped pretending to use, made a small, delighted sound behind her hand.

Marwan turned on his daughter with an expression that had nothing left of fatherly protection in it and everything of a man calculating exactly how much money he'd just lost. "Nine years," he said, voice shaking. "Nine years of his salary, his house, his patience — and you couldn't even give him an honest child?"

"Papa —"

"Get in the car," Marwan snapped, already turning away from Bagas entirely, the confrontation abandoned the second it stopped being profitable. "All of you. Now."

They left the way they'd arrived — loudly, gracelessly, trailed by the particular silence of a street that had just watched a family come completely undone on a sidewalk in broad daylight.

Bagas remained in his doorway a moment longer, watching the car peel away, feeling the last of nine years' worth of humiliation settle somewhere quiet and finally, finally still.

Mrs. Park caught his eye from across the lawn and gave him the smallest, most conspiratorial nod a woman balancing an unused watering can could manage.

He nodded back, and went inside to make a phone call to Vania Halim.

There was money to grow, and only eighty-nine days left to grow it.