Chapter 5 - The Midnight Counter-Attack
I didn't panic. Panicking gets you hit; panicking gets you trapped. That was the first rule my father taught us on the mats. When an opponent has you in a tight grip, you don't fight their strength directly—you look for the lever they left unprotected.
I walked over to the window. The room was on the second floor, looking out over the side garden. Below was a sturdy wooden trellis wrapped in thick ivy, leading down to the soft earth near the patio. I turned back to the room, opened my closet, and stripped out of my nightgown. I pulled on a pair of dark jeans, a black fitted long-sleeve shirt, and my running shoes.
From my purse, I pulled out my phone. I had three hours before Beatrice and Brandon returned from the hospital, and Charles was downstairs, likely sitting in his study near the front entrance, believing he had me trapped behind a locked door.
I slipped my phone into my back pocket, opened the window quietly, and tested the wooden trellis. It was solid. Years of climbing ropes and practicing pull-ups at the gym made the descent effortless. My feet hit the damp grass without making a sound.
Instead of running away, I circled around the side of the house toward Charles’s home office on the ground floor. The french doors leading to the patio were locked, but the old latch was worn. I pulled a small metal hair clip from my pocket, inserted it into the gap, and popped the mechanism open with a quiet click.
I slipped inside the office. The air smelled of old paper, leather, and cigar smoke. I knew I needed proof. If Charles really owned my parents' debt, there had to be physical documentation or digital records on his desk computer.
I moved behind the heavy mahogany desk. The computer monitor was asleep. I wiggled the mouse, and the screen lit up, prompting for a password. I didn't waste time trying to guess it. Instead, I began opening the drawers of the desk, searching through the color-coded files.
Near the bottom of the deep right drawer, I found a manila folder labeled Walter Miller - Property Acquisition.
My heart hammered against my ribs as I opened it under the faint light of the computer screen. Inside were copies of my father’s old gym loan, deed transfer documents, and a private agreement dated three months prior. But as I scanned the legal jargon, my eyes caught a detail that Charles hadn't mentioned.
The debt hadn't been bought legally.
The document showed that Charles’s company had acquired the note through a secondary lender that had failed to notify my father within the legally required 60-day window under Tennessee property law. Furthermore, there was a signed addendum from a corrupt local notary—a name I recognized as one of Charles’s business partners—falsifying the date of notice to make the foreclosure look immediate.
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It wasn't a solid legal trap; it was a desperate, fraudulent bluff designed to intimidate my family into submission before anyone could hire a proper lawyer to audit the documents.
Suddenly, the door handle of the office turned.
