Chapter 4 - The Anchor Drops
The sudden black screen left the interior of my rental car dead silent. For a long moment, I stared at the dashboard display, listening to the hum of the air conditioner. My phone remained dark for nearly two minutes. Then, a new notification popped up on the center console: an incoming call from an unfamiliar local number with a Savannah area code.
I let it ring three times before swiping to answer.
"Alexandra?"
It wasn't Riley. It wasn't Mom. It was Dad. His voice sounded older—hollowed out, stripped of all the bluster and fabricated authority he had used to mask his failures for the last decade.
"I'm here, Dad," I said quietly.
"The marina manager is evicting us from the slip," he said, his words coming out in slow, exhausted fragments. "The dock fees weren't part of the basic charter contract. They were billed separately. Your mother’s credit card was declined ten minutes ago when they tried to run the gate pass for our vehicle."
I looked out my windshield across the asphalt lot. A marina security guard in a high-visibility vest was currently standing beside my parents' dusty sedan, gesturing firmly toward the exit gate.
"Where are you going to go?" I asked.
"I don't know," Dad muttered. A heavy, ragged sigh rattled through the phone line. "The house... the machine shop has a second-position lien against the title now. Meridian Trust bought the debt last month when I couldn't make the machinery upgrade payments. We only have until the end of the week before the foreclosure notice goes public."
My hands tightened on the steering wheel. Meridian Trust. The exact same shadow company that had tried to steal my other family's land in Carmona. It seemed my family had a distinct talent for signing away their lives to predators while keeping up appearances for Instagram.
"Did you sign a power of attorney for that lien, Dad?" I asked sharply. "Tell me the truth."
A long, agonizing pause stretched across the line.
"Your brother... Derek helped me look over the documents," Dad whispered, the shame bleeding through every syllable. "He said it was just a standard operational loan to keep the shop open. He said you were too busy with your tech company to bother with old-fashioned machine parts."
My blood ran cold. Derek—my golden-boy brother living two states away—was systematically dismantling what little my parents had left, using Dad’s desperate need to feel relevant as a crowbar.
"Dad, listen to me very carefully," I said, my voice dropping into an absolute, unyielding register. "Get in your car right now. Do not talk to Riley. Do not let Mom stop at the bakery on the way home. Drive straight to my hotel in downtown Savannah. Do you understand me?"
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"Lexi, we can't—we can't impose on you after what happened—"
"This isn't a request," I cut him off. "If you stay in Savannah tonight, Derek's local associates are going to strip whatever equity is left in that house before you even wake up. Pack your bags. I'll meet you at the front desk in forty minutes."
