Chapter 4 - The Desperation Play
By Monday night, the indoor temperature had dropped to forty-one degrees.
The infrared camera feed showed Olivia wrapped in an oversized winter coat, pacing furiously across the living room while my father sat hunched over his phone, furiously dialing every contact in his address book.
None of them were answering. When powerful, arrogant men lose their leverage, their so-called friends tend to develop selective deafness.
Then my phone rang. Not an encrypted line this time, but my personal cell.
Caller ID: Dad.
I let it ring three times before sliding my thumb across the screen and pressing it to my ear. I didn't say a word.
“Elena,” my father’s voice came through the speaker, tight, trembling, and stripped of its usual haughty arrogance. “Stop this nonsense right now. You’re making a spectacle of the family.”
“You’re standing in my living room without permission, Dad,” I replied, my tone flat, calm, and utterly devoid of warmth.
“It’s a house! We’re your family!” he shouted, the thin veneer of composure cracking instantly. “Olivia’s children have nowhere to go! David’s business is struggling! And you’re sitting down there in California playing petty dictator with your military lawyers while your own flesh and blood freezes!”
“When you stood in this hallway three weeks ago and told me to go back to my base because I wasn't welcome here, did you consider us family?” I asked quietly.
A heavy, suffocating silence stretched across the line.
“Elena, please,” Olivia’s voice suddenly broke in on the speakerphone, sounding desperate and tearful. “Just let us stay through the week. We’ll sign an agreement, we’ll pay rent—just turn the heat back on. The kids are shivering.”
“You had a choice, Olivia,” I said. “You could have rented your own home. You could have lived within your means instead of waiting for Dad to steal my life savings and hand you a luxury villa on a silver platter. But you chose entitlement.”
“You cold-hearted bitch!” Olivia screamed, her voice shifting instantly from pleading to venomous rage. “You never cared about any of us! You just hide behind your uniform because you’re too bitter and broken to have a real family after James died!”
The second those words left her mouth, the temperature in my chest dropped to absolute zero.
James’s name wasn't a weapon to be thrown around in a petty real estate dispute.
May you like
“You have thirty-six hours before the bailiffs arrive,” I said, my voice dropping into the icy, unyielding register I used when reading rules of engagement to subordinate officers. “Pack your bags, get out of my house, and don't ever call this number again.”
I hung up the phone.
