Chapter 11 - The Challenge
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For a moment, the kitchen was entirely silent except for my heavy, ragged breathing. Then, Carter let out a loud, obnoxious bark of laughter that echoed off the marble countertops.
Mrs. Eleanor, hearing the commotion, walked into the kitchen and joined him. She looked down at me on the floor, her face contorted in a mask of absolute, cruel amusement.
"Your father?" she mocked, placing a manicured hand elegantly on her chest. "That pathetic, dirt-poor country bumpkin who never even bothers to visit you? What exactly is he going to do from three hundred miles away?"
Carter chuckled darkly, shaking his head as if I had just told the funniest joke in the world. He reached into his own tailored pocket and pulled out his sleek, state-of-the-art smartphone. He waved the device mere inches from my bleeding face.
"Sure, honey," Carter sneered, unlocking the screen with his thumb. "Let's give the old man a ring. Let’s hear exactly how he plans to drive his rusted-out pickup truck all the way down here to Alexandria to rescue his little princess."
He tapped the screen, navigating to his contacts. I had forced him to save my father's number a year ago for extreme emergencies, though he had never once used it. He found the contact saved simply as "Dad."
"This is going to be hilarious," Carter muttered, his thumb hovering over the call button.
He turned on the speakerphone setting, turned the volume all the way up so his mother could hear the humiliation clearly, and pressed call.
The harsh digital tone echoed through the bloody kitchen.
It rang once.
A long, agonizing pause.
It rang twice.
Mrs. Eleanor smirked, preparing to hurl insults at the man who raised me.
May you like
It rang three times.
And then, the line clicked open. The ambient static of an open cellular connection filled the room, sending a sudden chill down my spine. The trap was set.
