Chapter 3 - The Locks and the Letter
By 7:00 PM, we returned home.
The house was dark and quiet. True to my message, two off-duty officers from the private security firm I had hired three months ago were sitting in a marked sedan in our driveway. They had already moved Patricia and Nicole’s four large suitcases out onto the covered front porch.
A locksmith was sitting in a van behind them, waiting for us.
Within forty-five minutes, every exterior deadbolt on the house had been replaced with smart, electronic locks that required my fingerprint or a encrypted phone app to open. The garage code was wiped and reset.
Ethan walked through the house with a trash bag, clearing out every remnant of their six-week stay: leftover magazines in the living room, Patricia's expensive face creams in the guest bathroom, and Nicole's half-eaten snacks left on the coffee table.
I sat at the kitchen island with a cup of chamomile tea, watching him work. The bloodstains on the white floor had been scrubbed clean by Ethan before we left for the precinct, but the gray rack of lamb was still sitting in the trash bin under the sink, a quiet monument to how close Nicole had come to food poisoning.
"What did the precinct say?" I asked as Ethan walked back into the kitchen, carrying the trash bag.
"The officer reviewed the video," Ethan said, pulling out a stool next to me. "Because Patricia hurled a heavy object directly at your head resulting in bodily injury requiring sutures, it qualifies as Aggravated Assault. They issued a temporary protective order automatically. She'll be served at her hotel by tomorrow morning."
I looked down at my bulky white bandage. "She's going to hate you for this, Ethan."
"She already hated me, Clara," Ethan said softly, looking at me with eyes filled with painful clarity. "She didn't love me as a son; she loved me as an asset. As long as I was failing or needing her, she could control me. But the second you gave me the security to succeed without her, I became a threat to her pride."
He reached out, his thumb gently wiping a tear from my cheek.
"I spent my whole life trying to earn her approval," he whispered. "I thought if I worked harder, if I built a bigger company, if I gave her a place to live when she lost her money, she would finally look at me the way she looks at Nicole. But she doesn't care about anyone except herself."
The front doorbell chimed softly.
Ethan's shoulders tensed instantly, but when I opened the phone app connected to the porch camera, it wasn't Patricia or Nicole.
It was an older man in a navy suit holding a white envelope.
Ethan opened the door. "Can I help you?"
"Ethan Vance?" the man asked. "I'm a process server. I have a formal legal notice from the law office of Sterling & Associates regarding the estate of Patricia Vance and the corporate structure of Vance Contracting."
Ethan took the envelope, his brows furrowed in confusion. "What is this?"
"Your mother filed a civil petition two hours ago," the process server said deadpan. "She is suing you and your wife for breach of oral contract, claiming fifty percent ownership of your residential property and a thirty percent equity stake in your contracting business as compensation for 'unpaid maternal loans'."
Ethan stared at the document in his hands. The ink on my police report wasn't even dry yet, and his mother was already moving to destroy his livelihood and take the home we had built together.
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Ethan didn't yell. He didn't cry. He simply smiled a cold, dangerous smile—the smile of a man who had finally realized his enemy was no longer family.
"Tell her lawyer," Ethan said softly, "that we'll see them in court."
