Chapter 3 - The Aftermath
The heavy rain pounded against the windshield of my Honda Civic as I drove back down I-71 toward Columbus. My hands gripped the steering wheel tight, my knuckles turning white. The adrenaline that had sustained me during my confrontation at Aunt Linda's house was slowly wearing off, leaving behind a profound, hollow exhaustion.
My phone on the dashboard wouldn't stop buzzing.
Incoming Call: DadIncoming Call: Aunt LindaText Message: Cousin Mark - "Holy shit Emily, all hell broke loose after you left."
I ignored the calls and let the rain noise fill the car. I had won the battle, but there was no joy in victory. My father’s cruel words still echoed in my ears: “Emily, of course, was the mistake from my first marriage.”
He had chosen a stranger over his own flesh and blood, sacrificing my dignity just to flatter a gold-digger who was actively destroying him behind his back.
When I finally reached my apartment, I poured myself a hot cup of tea and sat on the couch. Just as I took a sip, my phone rang again. This time, it was Nana Rose.
I picked it up. "Hi, Nana."
"Emily, sweetheart," her soft, weathered voice came through the line. "Are you safe?"
"I'm fine, Nana. I'm home."
Nana Rose sighed deeply. "What happened today was terrible. Your father was an arrogant fool. He allowed vanity and flattery to blind him to the snake in his bed. But what you revealed today... child, it saved this family from total ruin."
"Did he kick her out?" I asked quietly.
"It’s chaos here," Nana said. "After you drove off, Richard demanded to see Vanessa’s personal laptop. She refused and tried to leave in the Mercedes. Richard blocked the driveway. They had a screaming match that ended with the police being called just to settle the disturbance. Vanessa and Brittany packed two bags and left in an Uber. But Emily..."
Nana paused, her tone growing serious. "Vanessa isn't going to go down without a fight. Uncle Dan says he saw Marcus Vance’s black SUV parked at the end of Linda's street right before Vanessa left. She’s connected to dangerous people."
A cold shudder ran down my spine. Marcus Vance wasn't just a dirty real estate developer; he was rumored to have deep ties to organized financial fraud rings operating out of East Coast shipping ports.
"Let her try," I replied grimly. "I have copies of every transaction statement logged into three secure cloud servers. If she comes after me, she’s walking straight into a federal courtroom."
"Just be careful, my sweet girl," Nana warned. "A wounded snake bites hardest before it dies."
After hanging up, I walked over to my desk and opened my laptop. As a forensic data analyst for a regional bank, spotting irregularities was what I did for a living. When Dad had forced me out of Lawson Logistics six months ago to give Brittany a high-paying executive job, I had quietly retained background access to the cloud network I had built for the company.
I logged into the server logs.
Suddenly, a red warning light flashed on my screen: UNAUTHORIZED DATA EXPORT IN PROGRESS.
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Someone was remotely deleting files from Lawson Logistics' main server right now—erasing the audit trail before the police could seize the hardware in the morning.
Vanessa wasn't just fleeing. She was launching a scorched-earth operation to destroy the entire company.
