The first crack across my windshield sounded like a gunshot. By the second swing, I realized my parents weren’t going to stop Tyler—t

I didn’t go upstairs for my purse. I went into my home office, locked the deadbolt, and sat down at my triple-monitor desk.

Outside my window, Tyler was leaning against the hood of my ruined car, lighting a cigarette and resting his dirty sneakers on the front bumper. My father was patting him on the shoulder, laughing as though Tyler had just hit a game-winning home run.

My hands were perfectly steady. I tapped the phone screen to end the recording. The three-minute-and-forty-second video had already finished syncing to my private cloud server, backed up across two external drives, and forwarded directly to my personal attorney, Marcus Vance.

I dialed Marcus’s direct line. He answered on the second ring.

“Nora? Aren't you supposed to be celebrating your new car?”

“Tyler took a tire iron to it five minutes ago,” I said evenly. “Mom and Dad stood on the porch, egged him on, and Dad just ordered me to surrender the keys and pay for the repairs.”

A stunned silence hung on the other end of the line. Marcus had represented me through three corporate contract negotiations and knew every detail of my toxic family dynamics.

“Are you hurt?” he demanded.

“Physically? Not a scratch. I played the victim and retreated inside. The entire incident is captured on clear 4K video with crystal-clear audio. Dad specifically states Tyler smashed it because I wouldn't give it to him, and Mom explicitly confirms it.”

Marcus let out a low whistle. “That’s felony criminal mischief. The Audi is brand-new, over sixty thousand dollars in value. Windshield, frame dents, scratched hood—that’s easily four to five thousand in property damage alone. In this state, anything over a thousand is a Class D felony.”

“I don’t want a settlement, Marcus. I don’t want an apology. I want the book thrown at him. And there’s more.”

“The house?” Marcus asked, his tone instantly shifting from lawyerly concern to professional predator.

“The house,” I confirmed, looking down at the red Manila folder resting beside my keyboard.

Sixteen months ago, Dad had made a disastrous private investment into a bogus cryptocurrency scheme run by one of his drinking buddies. Facing imminent foreclosure on the four-bedroom colonial they couldn't afford, Dad had taken out a high-interest private balloon loan from an independent holding LLC.

What Dad didn't know—what neither he nor Mom had ever bothered to check—was that six months ago, when the private lender wanted out of the note, I bought the lien through my own anonymous corporate entity, Silver Creek Holdings.

I didn’t just live in the finished basement apartment while saving for my permanent condo downtown.

I owned the mortgage note on their roof.

“Call the precinct, Nora,” Marcus said quietly. “I’m submitting the emergency preservation order right now. Don't engage with them. Let the badge do the talking.”

I hung up, opened the local dispatch portal, and placed the call.

Outside, a heavy fist pounded on my office door.

“Nora!” Dad shouted, rattling the brass handle. “Where are those damn keys? Tyler wants to move it into the garage before the rain starts!”

I sat back, watching the blue dot on my security app register two patrol cruisers turning onto our street.