Chapter 15 - Blood Against Blood
The temperature in the dusty bedroom plummeted. Outside, a low rumble of thunder rattled the floorboards, matching the tension coiled between us.
Dad stepped forward instantly, putting his massive frame between Vanessa’s hired thugs and me. It was an instinctive motion—the move of a father protecting his son, something Richard Vance had failed to do for thirty years, but was now doing without a second thought.
"Vanessa," Dad said, his voice dropping into a deep, commanding register that carried the ghosts of his former power. "Stand down. Look at yourself. Look at what you’ve become."
"Shut up, old man!" she shrieked, her voice cracking with hysteria. "You gave everything to *him*! You let him build his pathetic little company while I was left with millions in debt and federal warrants! You owe me! That drive contains the keys to thirty million dollars in hidden commercial paper! It belongs to me!"
"It belongs to the bankruptcy court, Vanessa," I said, slipping the drive into the breast pocket of my denim jacket and buttoning it down. "And that drive contains the proof that you forged Dad's name, defrauded the city, and deliberately tried to crush Apex before we could even pour our first foundation."
One of the thugs took a step forward, pulling a heavy steel wrench from his coat. "The lady said give her the drive, pal. Don't make this messy."
Dad didn't hesitate. For months he had been lifting hundred-pound sacks of cement and swinging twenty-pound sledgehammers at our job sites. He wasn't the soft, desk-bound executive who broke down on my porch anymore. Before the man could fully raise his arm, Dad lunged forward with explosive speed, slamming his shoulder into the thug’s chest and driving him violently back against the drywall with a sickening thud. The drywall cracked into spiderwebs, and the wrench clattered to the hardwood floor.
The second man lunged toward me, swinging a wild right hook. I slipped inside the arc of his punch, drove my elbow hard into his solar plexus, and swept his leg out from under him. He hit the floor with a breathless gasp, groaning as I pinned his wrist behind his back with my knee.
Vanessa screamed, retreating toward the hallway, her face contorted in sheer terror. She reached into her handbag, her hands clawing for something.
"Mason knows, Vanessa," I shouted, my voice cutting through the damp air like a whip.
She froze, her hand buried inside her purse. Her breathing came in ragged, jagged gasps. "What did you say?"
"Mason told us," I said, stepping over the groaning man on the floor. "He told us how you used to lock him in this room for hours while you held your offshore meetings. He told us how you laughed when Dad broke down crying on your kitchen floor. He knows everything, Vanessa. And he wants nothing to do with you."
Her eyes filled with a sudden, vicious hatred, but underneath it, an abyss of cold, hollow loneliness flickered. "He’s my son! He belongs to me!"
"A mother doesn't abandon her child to starve while she boards a private jet to the Bahamas," Dad said coldly, stepping beside me, his chest heaving, his eyes burning with absolute clarity. "You aren't a mother, Vanessa. You’re a parasite. And your time in this family is finished."
Siren wails cut through the distant rain outside. Three county cruiser sirens, screaming up the long gravel driveway.
"Clara called the sheriff twenty minutes ago," I said calmly. "You have about sixty seconds to run through the service entrance, Vanessa. Because if they catch you here, in violation of your restraining order, with two hired felons... you won't even make bail."
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Vanessa looked at her fallen men, looked at Dad, and finally looked at me. With a guttural sob of pure, unadulterated rage, she turned on her heels and vanished down the back servant staircase into the rainy shadows.
***
