Chapter 5 - The Desperate Call
"Clara! Clara, answer me!" Marlene’s voice came screeching through the speaker, so loud that Arthur looked over from his security desk twenty feet away. "Where are you?! Where did you go?!"
"I am where I need to be, Marlene," I said, my voice dead calm.
"Listen to me, Clara!" Marlene pleaded, her tone abruptly shifting from rage to a horrifying, desperate fake gentleness that made my skin crawl. "We need to talk! This is a family matter! I... I know I lost my temper earlier. I was stressed! The baby was crying, Jason was being lazy, and I reacted poorly! I am so, so sorry about your computer, sweetheart. I will buy you a brand new one tomorrow! The most expensive one they have!"
I let out a soft, dry laugh. "You smashed my computer because you thought you were destroying my father's trust, Marlene. Don't insult my intelligence."
"Clara, please!" she gasped, her breath coming in ragged, terrified gulps. "You don't understand what you're doing! If you trigger whatever legal nonsense your father set up, you will destroy this family! You will ruin Jason’s life! He has a baby, Clara! A newborn child! Do you want your little nephew to grow up without a home?!"
"Jason stood there and laughed while you threw a dirty diaper in my face," I said coldly. "He watched you slap me and smash my work. He didn't care about my life. Why should I care about his?"
"I'll give you money!" Marlene bargained frantically. "I have sixty thousand dollars in a private savings account! I will wire it to you right now! I'll give you the Mercedes! You can have the master suite in the house! Just tell me how to stop the timer! I know there's a timer!"
"There is no stopping it, Marlene," I said, looking at the glowing red countdown on the terminal screen: 00:36:15. "The vault was programmed five years ago. It operates on an immutable, decentralized ledger. Even if I wanted to stop it, I couldn't."
Silence fell over the line—a heavy, suffocating silence broken only by Marlene’s ragged breathing.
"You monster," she spat, her voice dropping all pretense of warmth, returning to the bitter, toxic poison I had known for five years. "You wretched little snake. Your father should have left you with nothing."
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"My father knew exactly what you were, Marlene," I whispered into the receiver. "That’s why he made sure I was twenty-five before I took his house back. Pack your bags. You have thirty-six minutes."
I hung up the phone and turned it completely off.
