Chapter 4 - The Venomous Threat
The silence on the line was so dense I could hear my father's heavy, ragged breathing over the digital static.
"You're threatening me?" Arthur Vance's voice dropped an octave, dripping with pure poison. "Your own father? After everything your mother and I have given you?"
"You gave me a two-dollar plastic piggy bank with a clearance sticker on the bottom," I replied smoothly, looking out at the rain-soaked Seattle skyline. "And then you used my credit score to buy my sister a luxury vehicle. You didn't give me anything, Dad. You've been taking from me for ten years."
"Listen to me, you arrogant little bitch," he growled, dropping any pretense of paternal authority. "You think because you wear a hard hat and have a fancy title in Seattle that you're above this family? You are nothing without us! You hear me? Nothing!"
"If I'm nothing, then you shouldn't need my credit score," I said.
"You have twenty-four hours!" he raged, slamming his hand onto a wooden table on his end of the line. "Twenty-four hours to transfer that authorization back to the dealership and get Chelsea’s keys back in her hand, or I swear to God, Iris, I will make your life a living hell. I will call your company. I will tell your bosses what kind of sociopath they hired. I will tell everyone in Portland how you abandoned your family on Christmas night!"
"Is that all?" I asked quietly.
"No, that is not all!" he shouted. "If that BMW isn't back in our driveway by tomorrow morning, I am walking straight into the Multnomah County Sheriff's office and filing a police report for auto theft! I will have a warrant issued for your arrest, Iris! Let's see how your structural engineering firm feels about employing a felon!"
I paused. A cold, sharp smile touched the corners of my lips—a realization dawning on me that my father had completely forgotten a crucial piece of administrative history.
Three years ago, when my father was drowning in business debt and facing tax liens, he had signed over the legal titles of several family assets to prevent them from being seized by state creditors. Among those assets was a certain property, along with the secondary vehicle registered under his business name—the very vehicle he had traded in at the dealership as a down payment for Chelsea’s BMW.
He had transferred the title of that trade-in vehicle directly into my name to hide it from his creditors. He had never legally transferred it back because doing so would have incurred a four-figure state tax fee he didn't want to pay.
Which meant the $15,000 trade-in credit used to secure Chelsea's BMW was tied to a vehicle title legally owned 100% by Iris Vance.
He hadn't just used my credit score; he had used my property as collateral for Chelsea's Christmas gift.
And he had completely forgotten.
"Did you hear me, Iris?!" he yelled into the phone. "A warrant for your arrest!"
"I heard you, Dad," I said softly, my voice calm as marble. "Do whatever you feel you need to do."
I hung up the phone.
I sat in my chair for a moment, my heart beating with a cold, precise rhythm. I pulled my personal laptop out of my bag, opened my secure cloud drive, and accessed my legal document folder.
There it was. A scanned PDF of the clean title, stamped by the State of Oregon, bearing my legal signature and primary identification number.
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My father thought he was holding a gun to my head. He had no idea he was standing in a room full of gasoline, holding a lit match.
I picked up my desk phone again. "Brenda," I said smoothly. "Please connect me to Legal Counsel. I need to schedule an urgent meeting with our chief corporate attorney."
