Chapter 5 - The Panic in the Dining Room
"Richard! What is happening?!" Eleanor shrieked, hurrying out of the dining room into the grand marble foyer, her expensive cashmere wrap clutched tightly around her neck. "Who are these men?! Call the police!"
"I am trying, Mother, but my phone has zero bars!" Richard yelled back, frantically tapping his glowing screen as the signal indicator sat frozen on SOS.
Jessica clung to Richard’s arm, her face pale under layers of heavy makeup. "Richard, make them stop! They look like terrorists!"
"They aren't terrorists, Jessica," I said calmly, stepping out from the shadows of the curved staircase.
My voice cut through the chaos of the foyer like a razor blade. Every head snapped around. Richard froze, his eyes widening in sheer disbelief as he saw me standing there—no longer trembling, no longer weeping, but looking down at him with a terrifying, unreadable composure.
"Sarah?" Richard stammered, taking a step backward. "How... how did you get out there? You were in the garage!"
"I was," I replied smoothly, resting a hand gently against my rounded belly. "And then I called my brothers."
"Your... your brothers?" Eleanor laughed nervously, though her voice shook violently. "Don't be absurd, Sarah. You’re an orphan from a broken foster home in Chicago. Everyone knows that!"
"Foster homes are wonderful places, Eleanor," a deep, cold voice answered from the front doorway.
CRACK!
With a final, deafening screech of stressed metal, Kael forced the iron security gate completely off its hinges. It crashed onto the marble floor of the foyer, raising a cloud of dust. Jax and Kael stepped over the barrier, moving into the house with the synchronized, lethal precision of two apex predators entering a pen of frightened sheep.
Richard scrambled backward, tripping over the edge of the Persian rug and landing hard on his back. "Stay back! You're trespassing! This is breaking and entering!"
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Jax stopped two feet away from Richard, looking down at my cowering husband as if he were looking at a cockroach crawling across a dirty kitchen floor.
"Breaking and entering implies we don't own the deed," Jax said softly, pulling a heavy combat knife from his thigh holster. He tested the razor-sharp edge with his thumb. "And since our little sister owns fifty-one percent of your corporate assets through prenuptial clauses your lawyers were too stupid to read properly... I'd say we're just inspecting our property."
