Chapter 3 - The Ghost Electrician
The words on the final page burned into my retinas. *They come back at ten.*
I looked down at Claire, whose bruised face was illuminated by the pale light of the refrigerator. "Who is coming back?" I asked, my voice terrifyingly calm.
"The men," she whispered, swallowing hard. "The ones who held me down. Margaret let them in through the back gate. They brought the legal papers for the house equity transfer. When I grabbed the kitchen scissors to cut myself free from the chair, your mother yelled that I was attacking them. That's when Brittany brought the kitchen shears... to 'punish' my disobedience."
My jaw clenched so hard I thought my teeth might crack. "And the man they talked about? The electrician from Hendersonville?"
A bitter, humorless smile touched the corner of Claire's bruised lips. "There is no electrician. That was just a story they invented in case the neighbors saw strangers entering the house. They needed an excuse for why I looked like this—a jealous lover's quarrel gone wrong, or a domestic dispute. Anything to make you believe I was unfaithful so you'd throw me out before you checked the paperwork."
I gently set the notebook down on the kitchen island and pulled out my smartphone. If my mother and sister thought they could run a military-grade psychological operation on my own home, they were about to learn what real tactical awareness looked like.
I didn't call the local police precinct—not yet. Small-town departments could be manipulated by people like my mother, who ran half the local charity boards and knew every judge within fifty miles. Instead, I dialed a private investigator friend I had served with in the Second Battalion—Marcus Vance, now running a high-end security and corporate forensics firm out of Nashville.
"Vance," a gravelly voice answered on the second ring. "You're back early, Captain."
"Marcus, I need an immediate data pull and a digital forensics sweep on a Hendersonville residential address," I said, rattling off our home address. "I also need traffic and dash-cam footage from our street starting at 7:00 PM tonight. Someone's running a scam under my roof, and I need ironclad proof before I drop the hammer."
"Send me the details," Marcus replied, his tone instantly shifting from casual to tactical. "Give me twenty minutes to hack the neighborhood cloud feeds and pull local traffic cams. I'll call you back with what I find."
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As I hung up, I heard the faint murmur of voices in the hallway. My mother and sister were whispering just outside the kitchen door, plotting their next move, completely unaware that the trap they had set was about to snap shut on them.
TITLE: The Price of Blood and Rice
