I Ended My Mother’s Stolen Legacy Onstage Chapter 05
I stepped onto the stage in a slow and deliberate manner.
Camera flashes were going off wildly in my face.
The host froze momentarily before snapping back to reality “Mr. Litt, this is…”
“I know what’s going on,” I said, stepping around him and stopping in front of the microphone.
Emma’s face had already darkened, while Mason tugged Jason’s hand and stepped back.
With all the cameras pointing in my face, I finally spoke up
“What you’ve just heard is a piece called ‘Nocturne‘. It does not belong to Jason Gere. Its true composer was James Litt–my father.”
An uproar broke out in the audience.
A reporter shouted, “Who’s that?”
I answered, “He’s a piano teacher who died in a car accident 15 years ago, and he’s also Emma’s first husband.”
Emma snapped to her feet. “Bullshit! I have no idea who that is!” Then she instructed the security guards, “Throw him out!”
They rushed toward the stage.
I pulled my phone from my pocket and cast a photo onto the big screen.
It was a photo Grandpa had cherished for years.
A young man stood before a piano, with a woman beside him in the image.
The woman was Emma in her youth, and the man was Dad. They stood shoulder to shoulder, smiling happily.
The bottom–right corner of the photo showed a date from 15 years ago.
A deafening silence fell over the venue.
Blood drained from Emma’s face.
“I found this photo in my late dad’s belongings. Ms. Gere, are you sure you don’t know him?”
She opened her mouth, but not a single word came out.
Mason snatched the microphone. “What can an old photo prove? Everyone has a past.”
“Then what about this?” I pulled a stack of papers from the file folder and projected them onto the screen.
It was Dad’s manuscript. The yellowed sheet of music was covered with countless corrections. The title was Nocturne“, and the date of composition was 15 years ago.
Every note was identical to the piece Jason had performed in the competition.
“He produced the original manuscript 15 years ago, and Jason wasn’t even born yet.”
I turned to Jason.
His face had gone ashen, and his lips trembled.
“You said you spent two years composing this piece, right? Then who wrote these notes all those years ago?”
“I- I don’t know… Mom, what is going on?”
Emma didn’t look at him. Instead, she was staring at me. There was a complex emotion in her eyes that I had never seen before.
It wasn’t anger.
It was fear.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
I laughed. “Take a guess?”
I retrieved the last item from the file folder–a DNA test report–and projected it onto the big screen.
Everyone gasped.
The report bore two names–mine and Emma. The results confirmed that we were biological mother and son, with a 99.9997% probability.
My voice echoed through the hall, hammering every word into everyone’s hearts.
“Emma is my mother, and James is my father. After she and my father began living apart due to their careers, my dad raised me on his own. He never asked her for a single penny.
“When I was ten, my dad decided to join a concert that sealed his fate. He took that piece with him as he traveled to the venue. The brakes in his car failed, and the car plunged off a cliff.
“Later, I discovered that the brakes had been tampered with.”
I locked eyes with Emma. “You were the one who did it.”
