Chapter 2 - Cold Engines
The sound of Nora’s footsteps fading up the carpeted stairs was the only noise in the house for a long, heavy minute.
Evelyn smoothed down the lapels of her silk gown, her hands trembling slightly—not from fear, but from offended pride. She looked at me as if I were a insubordinate private standing in front of a general.
“You’ve let her twist your mind, Adrian,” Evelyn said, her voice dropping into a manipulative, maternal register. “While you were away in Germany, she was careless with the family accounts. She refused to let Ryan use the corporate credit card for his business trip. She locked the master study. I had to step in to maintain order. A pregnant woman’s hormones make her unstable. I was simply teaching her structure.”
I looked at Ryan, who was slowly pulling himself up using the edge of the fireplace mantle.
“Is that what you call it, Ryan?” I asked, my voice flat. “Structure? Recording your sister-in-law on her knees for your personal entertainment?”
Ryan spat on the marble floor, flexing his red wrist. “She’s an arrogant nobody from upstate, Adrian! She acts like she’s better than us just because she has a master's degree. Mom asked her for a simple foot bath because her arthritis was flaring up, and Nora threw a fit! She needed to be brought down a notch.”
I took two slow steps toward my brother.
Ryan immediately flinched back, pressing his spine against the brickwork of the chimney. He knew what I was capable of. He knew I had spent twelve years in the Army Special Operations Command, while he had spent his twenties drifting between failed business ventures funded entirely by our mother.
“If you ever come within fifty feet of my wife again,” I said, leaning in until my voice was a low rustle in his ear, “I won't smash your phone. I’ll smash every bone in your right hand. Do you understand me?”
Ryan swallowed hard, his eyes wide with genuine terror. He nodded once, rapidly.
“Adrian! How dare you threat your brother in my presence!” Evelyn yelled, her voice echoing off the vaulted ceilings of the foyer. “This house was built on Sullivan money! Your father’s legacy! You will not talk to us like we are intruders!”
“This house,” I said, turning my head slowly to look at her, “was purchased four years ago with my military sign-on bonuses, my deployment savings, and a VA loan under my name alone. Dad’s legacy was spent three years ago when you lost six hundred thousand dollars on Ryan’s failed real estate venture in Wilmington.”
Evelyn’s face turned ashen. “That was a family investment!”
“It was fraud,” I corrected cold-bloodedly. “And I have the bank statements sitting in a secure digital drive at my attorney’s office.”
Before she could form a reply, the soft thud of a suitcase coming down the stairs broke the silence.
Nora appeared at the landing. She was wearing a thick black sweater, dark leggings, and a coat wrapped tightly around her belly. She carried a single medium suitcase in one hand and her handbag in the other. Her hair was pulled back into a messy bun, and though her cheeks were pale, her eyes were clearer than they had been twenty minutes ago.
I walked over to the stairs, took the heavy suitcase from her hand, and offered her my arm.
She looked at my arm for a second, then slid her fingers around my elbow, leaning her forehead lightly against my shoulder for support.
“Do you have your medical records?” I asked gently.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Everything is in my bag.”
“Let’s go.”
“Adrian Sullivan!” Evelyn shouted from the entrance of the sitting room, her voice rising to a shrill scream. “If you walk out that door with that woman, do not bother coming back! You will be cut off from the family trust! You will get nothing from the firm!”
I stopped at the front door. I pulled the heavy key ring from my pocket, selected the brass front-door key, and unclipped it from the ring.
I tossed it onto the console table, right next to the paper bag of fruit tarts I had bought an hour ago.
“Keep the pastries, Mom,” I said without looking back. “They’ll be the last thing you ever get from me.”
May you like
I opened the door, guided Nora out into the crisp, cool morning air, and led her to my dark blue truck parked in the driveway.
The engine turned over with a deep, throaty roar, cutting through the silence of the suburban street as the sun began to peek over the tree line.
