Chapter 2 - The Empty Nest
The lock on my apartment door didn’t turn because the cylinder had been drilled out and replaced with a heavy-duty deadbolt. I didn’t bother picking it. I used a hard, practiced shoulder-shrug that popped the frame right out of the cheap drywall—a trick I’d learned in urban warfare training, though I never expected to use it on my own rented living room.
The apartment was hollow.
Every piece of furniture, every framed photograph, every box of my military memorabilia had been stripped down to the bare baseboards. The walls showed pale squares where pictures used to hang, like ghostly negatives of a life that had been scrubbed clean.
“Mom?” Eli whispered, clutching the hem of my jacket as we stepped inside. “Where’s my bed?”
“They took it, buddy,” I said softly, crouching down to meet his eyes. “We’re going to stay in a hotel tonight. A nice one with a pool.”
“Is Grandpa coming back?”
“No,” I told him, and for the first time, I didn't soften the blow. “Grandpa isn’t coming back at all.”
I walked into the kitchen. The refrigerator hummed in an empty room, completely bare except for a single white envelope propped against the counter. My name was written on it in Chloe’s precise, looping cursive.
I tore it open. Inside was a single keycard for the Silver Legacy downtown and a handwritten note:
Vivian, stop fighting the audit. Dad’s health is failing, and the estate is locked down. If you stay in Reno, you’ll lose everything, including Eli. Take the bus ticket at the front desk and go back East.
There was no signature. Just a postscript scrawled in the margin: I’m sorry it had to be this way.
I laughed, a dry, sharp sound that echoed off the empty walls. An audit? My father was as healthy as an ox, and my estate consisted of my military pension and a ten-year-old sedan. There was no estate to lock down unless they were hiding something massive—or laundering something through the Sterling & Vance shell.
My phone buzzed in my pocket—the burner phone Miller had lent me. An incoming text from an unknown local number.
May you like
Check your bank account, Major. You don't exist anymore.
I pulled up my mobile banking app on cellular data. The screen flickered, loaded for three seconds, and then flashed a stark, red message: Account Closed. Balance: $0.00.
