Chapter 3 - The Cloud and the Counterstrike
My mother finally found her voice. "Rachel! How can you do this to your own sister? To your own nephew? We are your family!"
"Family doesn't burn a teenager's future out of spite, Mom," I said. "You sat right there and didn't lift a finger. You let them destroy Lily's work."
"It's just a toy!" Diane yelled. "I'll pay you back for the damn plastic box! How much was it? A few hundred dollars?"
"Three thousand two hundred dollars for the hardware," Evan corrected her. "Plus the commercial value of the digital assets lost. We are preparing a civil lawsuit for thirty thousand dollars in damages."
Diane scoffed, though her voice shook. "Thirty thousand? Are you insane? You can't sue me for money I don't have!"
"Then we will lien your assets," Evan said calmly. "Including your vehicle and your bank accounts."
Officer Miller began writing out a citation and took statements from Jake and Diane. Because Jake was a minor, he wasn't hauled away in handcuffs that night, but he was formally summoned to juvenile court, while Diane was issued a court summons for instigation and destruction of property.
After the police car drove away, my father stood up, his face red with indignation. "Get off my property, Rachel. Both of you. I don't ever want to see you in this house again."
I picked up the blue folder from the patio table. "You seem to be confused, Dad. This isn't your property. It's mine. And because you allowed criminal acts to take place here, you are currently in breach of your life estate agreement."
"You're going to kick your own parents out?" my mother gasped, clutching her chest.
"I'm giving you thirty days to vacate," I said smoothly. "Evan will serve the official notice tomorrow morning. You can move into Diane's spare bedroom since she loves your company so much."
"Rachel, no!" Diane shrieked. "I don't have room for them in my house! I have three kids!"
"Then I guess you shouldn't have encouraged your son to burn down my house's peace," I said.
I put my arm around Lily's shoulder and walked her out to my car. As we pulled away from the curb, I saw my family standing under the patio lights, arguing frantically among themselves as the fire pit continued to belch thick, ugly smoke into the night sky.
When we arrived home at our apartment, Lily sat on the couch, staring blankly at her knees.
"It's all gone, Mom," she whispered, her voice crackling with heartbreak. "The portfolio. The deadline for the summer program is in seventy-two hours. I don't have backups of the final renders. They were only saved on the internal drive."
I sat down next to her and smiled softly. "Lily, who set up your network settings when we bought that computer?"
She blinked at me. "You did?"
"And where did I insist we set up an automatic real-time cloud sync every night at midnight?"
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Lily’s eyes widened. She gasped, grabbing my hands. "The secure cloud vault?"
"Every single stroke, vector, and render was uploaded to my encrypted server at midnight yesterday," I said, pulling out my own professional tablet. "They thought they were burning your dreams. All they did was burn a metal shell."
