Chapter 8 - Confrontation in the Timber
The front door didn't just open; it crashed back against the interior wall with a splintering thud.
Arthur stood in the doorway, drenched in rain, his expensive suit ruined, his tie hanging loose around his collar. Behind him stood Julian, holding a heavy tire iron pulled from the trunk of their Mercedes, looking terrified and desperate.
Arthur’s eyes locked onto the open hearth compartment, the steel lockboxes scattered across the floor, and the documents spread out around my knees.
"You shouldn't have opened that," Arthur whispered, his voice trembling with a mixture of rage and sheer panic. "That was family business, Clarissa. You had no right coming up here and digging through things that don't belong to you."
I stood up slowly, keeping my hand resting casually near my service pistol, though I didn't draw it. I looked at my father—really looked at him—and saw a man who had traded his honor for a ledger sheet fifty years ago and spent every day since terrified that someone would finally ask to see the balance.
"It stopped being family business the moment you started skimming funds meant for battlefield medical supplies," I said, my voice ringing clear and steady in the small cabin. "Grandpa spent his entire life trying to protect the people wearing the uniform. You spent yours trying to profit off their blood."
"We built this family!" Arthur shouted, taking a step forward into the room. "We gave you a name! We gave you everything! And you threw it all away for some field tent in the mud!"
"You didn't give me anything, Arthur," I replied, stepping out from behind the hearth. "Grandpa gave me my compass. You just gave me a reason to follow it."
Julian raised the tire iron slightly, his hand shaking. "Dad... we need to grab the boxes and go. If the feds find us out here—"
"Shut up, Julian!" Arthur snarled, his eyes fixed on me. He took another step forward, reaching into his coat pocket. "She's not leaving with those boxes. If she walks out that door, the Vance name is finished. Everything we built is gone."
"It's already gone, Arthur," I said. "The audit started this afternoon. By morning, federal marshals will be seizing the accounts. The only question left is whether you want to spend the rest of your life in a federal penitentiary or let the truth come out the honest way."
Arthur pulled his hand out of his pocket. He wasn't holding a phone or a document. He was holding a small, heavy silver revolver—an antique piece from his father's collection that had hung in a glass case in the Foxhall house for forty years.
"I'm sorry, Clarissa," Arthur said, his voice dropping to a harsh, cold whisper. "I really am. But I'm not going to prison for a daughter who should have stayed away."
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Julian’s eyes went wide, the color draining entirely from his face. "Dad... what are you doing? That's—that's insane! You can't shoot an active-duty Army colonel!"
"Watch me," Arthur hissed, raising the barrel toward my chest.
