Chapter 6 - A Call to Arms
|
I pulled my phone from its hidden perch beside the lamp, stopping the recording and securely backing the video file up to three separate, encrypted cloud servers. Then, I dialed a number I knew by heart.
The phone rang twice before it was answered.
“Eleanor,” my attorney, Eleanor Price, said warmly. Then she paused, her sharp instincts immediately picking up on the ragged edge of my breathing. “Eleanor, your voice is cracking. What happened?”
I stared down at the heavy kitchen scissors Vanessa had carelessly tossed onto my mahogany dresser.
“They escalated, Ellie,” I said, my voice dropping to a steel-cold whisper. “Vanessa came into my room while I was sleeping. She took scissors and hacked off half of my hair. Michael stood by and watched. He told me I needed to learn my place.”
There was a profound, deadly silence on the other end of the line. Eleanor Price had been my legal counsel for fifteen years. She was a woman who ate corporate lawyers for breakfast.
“Are you physically injured?” Eleanor asked, her tone shifting from friendly to purely lethal. “Do I need to send the police right now?”
“No,” I replied. “I am physically fine. But they’ve made their final move. They’re going to try to force me to sign refinancing papers to drain the equity from the house so they can lock me in a care facility. They gave themselves a deadline. Friday.”
“Idiots,” Eleanor hissed. “Absolute, arrogant idiots.”
“I have it all on video and audio,” I said, looking at my reflection in the vanity mirror, taking in the jagged, brutalized state of my hair.
May you like
“What are your orders, Eleanor?” she asked, all business now.
“Activate everything,” I commanded, feeling the old, familiar fire of the boardroom igniting in my veins. “I want every debt called in. I want every asset frozen. I want the authorities briefed. We drop the hammer three days from now. On Friday morning.”
