After ten years of saving, skipping vacations, driving the same aging Honda, and working overtime whenever my company offered it

My breath caught in my throat. My blood turned into liquid nitrogen.

On the screen of my phone, miles away from where I sat parked in Dublin, my father was walking toward my dream home with a container of gasoline.

"Nathan!" I screamed into the phone. "They’re at my house! Kyle has a crowbar, and Richard has a gas can! They’re going to burn it down!"

"I'm dialing the Franklin County Sheriff dispatch right now on my other line!" Nathan barked. "Stay where you are! Do not drive there, Claire! Do you hear me? Stay in Dublin!"

On the screen, Richard looked like a madman. His face was twisted into an unrecognizable mask of rage. He poured the red plastic can onto the freshly planted boxwood hedges lining my front porch, splashing liquid across the wooden railing and the welcome mat.

Kyle stepped up to the front door, wedging the sharp edge of the crowbar into the seam between the door and the reinforced steel strike plate Greg had installed last night.

*SCREEECH!*

The audio from the Ring camera sent a high-pitched screech of tearing wood through my phone speaker. Kyle put his entire weight behind the bar, trying to pop the frame.

The door groaned, but the three-inch hardened steel screws held firm.

Suddenly, the security system’s automated voice kicked in:

*"WARNING. YOU ARE TRESPASSING ON PRIVATE PROPERTY. POLICE HAVE BEEN DISPATCHED."*

Kyle stopped, looking up at the camera. "Richard, the damn thing is talking! Break the window!"

Richard dropped the gas can, grabbed a heavy concrete garden paver from the edge of my flowerbed, and stepped toward the twenty-foot living room bay window.

"Dad, NO!" I screamed instinctively through the app’s speaker, my voice blasting across the porch. "STOP! THE POLICE ARE TWO MINUTES AWAY!"

Richard froze for half a second, his wild eyes finding the black lens.

"You destroyed my life!" Richard screamed back at the camera, his voice cracking with madness. "If I can't have a home, you don't get one either!"

He raised the concrete paver above his head with both hands, lunging toward the glass.

*WHEEEEL-WHOP! WHEEEEL-WHOP!*

A deafening siren split the suburban air.

From the edge of the screen, two Franklin County Sheriff patrol SUVs tore into the cul-de-sac at forty miles per hour, tires sliding across the asphalt, blocking the driveway from behind Kyle’s Impala.

Four deputies leaped out of their cruisers before the vehicles had even completely stopped, their service weapons drawn and leveled.

"DROP THE WEAPON! DROP IT! GET ON THE GROUND! BOTH OF YOU, DOWN ON THE GROUND RIGHT NOW!"

Kyle dropped the crowbar instantly, throwing his hands in the air and falling flat on his face against the concrete walkway. He was a convicted felon; he knew what happened if he hesitated for half a second.

Richard, blinded by sixty years of unchecked entitlement and blind fury, didn't drop the paver immediately. He turned toward the deputies, chest heaving, holding the heavy stone above his shoulders.

"IT'S MY DAUGHTER'S HOUSE!" Richard roared. "GET OFF MY PROPERTY!"

"DROP IT OR YOU WILL BE TASED!" Deputy Miller shouted, stepping forward with his yellow X26 Taser leveled at Richard’s chest.

Richard took one step forward.

*POP!*

Two metal probes shot across the lawn, striking Richard squarely in the center of his chest.

Fifty thousand volts of electrical current surged through his muscles. Richard let out a choked, guttural gasp, the concrete stone slipping from his fingers and crashing onto his own foot before his entire body locked up like a falling tree, collapsing face-first into the gasoline-soaked mulch.

I sat in my car in Dublin, watching through the phone screen as deputies swarmed my father, wrenching his arms behind his back and clicking the steel cuffs into place.

Kyle was already in restraints, his face pressed into the dirt, cursing Megan’s name at the top of his lungs.

Deputy Miller walked up to the Ring camera, looked directly into the lens, and spoke: