CHAPTER 4 — THE FIRST COLLAPSE
At 3:14 PM, my phone rang again.
Preston.
This time, I answered.
His voice wasn’t angry anymore.
It was unstable.
“What the hell did you do?” he said.
I leaned back on my couch.
“I went home.”
“You froze my accounts.”
“I didn’t,” I said calmly. “My bank did.”
“That’s my money.”
“No,” I replied. “It was never yours. You just got comfortable.”
Silence.
Then Eleanor’s voice came on the line.
Sharp. Controlled. Panicked underneath.
“You’re destroying a family over a misunderstanding.”
I smiled slightly.
“A slap isn’t a misunderstanding.”
Another silence.
Then Richard’s voice, lower than the rest.
“Maya… we can fix this privately.”
That was the moment I realized something important.
They weren’t sorry.
May you like
They were calculating.
And I had already stopped being useful to them.
