Chapter 5 - The Last Supper at the Manor
Before deploying overseas, I had one final piece of business to handle on the home front.
Word of my reactivation had already filtered through select defense channels, and my father’s frantic legal team had tried serving me with cease-and-desist papers for "financial abandonment." They genuinely believed that because I had supported Chloe and Marcus for years, I was legally obligated to continue funding their collapsing lifestyle.
I pulled my rented SUV up the long, winding gravel driveway of my parents' Virginia estate. The grandeur of the place had faded significantly in less than a week. The catering tents were gone, the manicured lawn was marred by the tire tracks of towing trucks, and the front porch looked abandoned.
As I walked up the stone steps, the front door swung open. My father stood there, looking haggard, his eyes bloodshot. Behind him, Chloe was weeping openly on the living room sofa, while my mother paced the floor like a caged animal.
"Zariah," my father breathed, his voice a mixture of rage and desperate pleading. "What have you done? The bank foreclosed on Chloe's house this morning. Her boutique is being liquidated by creditors. You destroyed her life over a petty argument!"
I walked past him into the foyer, my combat boots clicking sharply against the marble floor. I didn't take off my sunglasses.
"I didn't destroy her life, Dad," I said coldly, turning to face them. "I simply stopped financing her illusions. Marcus is a fraud who couldn't hold down a real job if his life depended on it, and Chloe is accustomed to spending money she never earned."
"You ungrateful bitch!" Chloe shrieked, jumping off the couch and storming toward me. Her face was contorted with pure venom. "You've always been jealous of me! Because you're a cold, scarred freak who couldn't keep a man, you had to ruin my wedding and destroy my future!"
She raised her hand to slap me.
It was a slow, clumsy, emotional swing—just like Marcus's.
Before her fingers could even graze my cheek, my hand shot out, catching her wrist in an iron grip. I didn't twist it, and I didn't throw her to the ground. I simply held her arm suspended in mid-air, applying just enough pressure to make her wince.
"Don't ever," I whispered, my voice dropping an octave into that terrifying, dead-calm tone that had silenced hardened insurgents in Kandahar, "raise your hand at me again."
Chloe whimpered, her eyes wide with sudden, primal terror as she looked into my face and finally realized the abyss that separated us.
I released her wrist, letting her stumble backward into our mother's arms.
May you like
"My attorney has filed the final dissolution papers for all joint accounts," I said, looking at my father. "As of today, you are entirely on your own. Do not call me. Do not text me. If you attempt to contact me again, I won't just ignore you—I will ensure military intelligence investigates every single penny of corporate fraud Marcus has been committing under your family name."
I turned on my heel, walking out the heavy front doors and leaving the shattered remnants of my family behind in their golden cage.
