Chapter 5 - The Midnight Packing
The phone slipped from David’s trembling hand, clattering loudly against the hardwood floor before the call automatically disconnected.
In the sudden, suffocating silence that filled the villa, nobody moved. The realization hung in the air like a physical weight, crushing every smug assumption they had walked through the front door with just hours earlier.
“He... he lied to us?” Olivia whispered, turning her wide, horrified eyes toward our father. “Dad, you said the house was yours to give!”
“I... I thought it was,” Dad stammered, backing away as Susan glared at him with pure, venomous fury. “She told me she bought it with her savings, but I assumed—I assumed as the patriarch—”
“Your assumptions just cost us everything,” Susan hissed, grabbing her coat off the back of the sofa. “Get your bags, Olivia. We are getting out of here before the police show up.”
From three hundred miles away, I watched the entire frantic scramble unfold on my laptop screen.
They rushed through the hallways, throwing clothes back into suitcases, dropping boxes, and shouting recriminations at one another in the dark. The villa that they had intended to use as their personal trophy had instead become a trap of their own arrogant making.
My phone buzzed on the desk. It was Ethan Wright.
May you like
“Everything set on your end?” Ethan’s voice came through crisp and clear.
“Everything is set,” I replied, watching Dad stumble over a duffel bag on the live feed. “Let the sheriff handle the morning shift.”
