The silence after Elliot’s announcement felt heavier than the folder stretched across my desk.
Dad stared at the phone. “That’s impossible.”
“It became possible when your daughter bought my partners’ shares last month,” Elliot said. “Quietly. Lawfully. And with considerably better manners than you brought into her office.”
My mother turned to face me. “You purchased this building?”
“No,” Dad interrupted. “She couldn’t have done that. She never had that kind of money.”
I opened the folder he had thrown across my desk.
Inside was a badly drafted demand letter packed with threats. It claimed my firm owed him compensation for years of family “support” and insisted that he deserved an executive position to shield the business from “immature management.”
One client in the waiting area whispered, “Is this man serious?”
Dad heard the remark, and his face turned red.
“You believe you’re above us now?” he demanded.
“I believe you entered my workplace and threatened me,” I replied.
My mother stepped closer. “We raised you.”
“You exploited me.”
At that moment, my brother, Dylan, appeared in the office doorway. He was breathing hard, and his suit jacket sat crooked across his shoulders.
“Dad, stop this,” he said.
My father turned sharply. “You called him?”
“No,” I answered. “Your accountant called him.”
Dad narrowed his eyes.
Dylan looked sick. “Natalie, I had no idea they were coming here. I swear.”
That part, I believed.
Dylan was spoiled, irresponsible, and weak, but he was not calculating enough to arrange something like this.
Elliot’s voice came over the speaker again. “Victor, after our lunch, I sent your proposal to Natalie’s attorney. Your offer to interfere with her lease, pressure her clients, and install yourself inside her firm has been fully documented.”
My mother seized my father’s sleeve. “Victor.”
He pulled his arm free. “Family matters are private.”
I stood up, opened my desk drawer, and removed a second folder.
“Not when you forge my signature on loan documents to fund Dylan’s restaurant,” I said.
Dylan froze.
Dad whispered, “Natalie.”
I slid the second folder over the desk.
“Now we can talk about why you truly came here.”
PART 3
