Mój ojciec kazał mi się „wynieść”, bo nie mogłem zapłacić 12 000 dolarów — nie wiedział, że już kupiłem dom na plaży na Florydzie.

“I have a few shelf companies ready to go,” Ethan said. “We can rename one. What do you want to call it?”

I thought about the view from the house in Cedar Ridge, the way the land sloped down toward the river. The view they were so proud of. I thought about the house in Florida I’d just bought. The one facing the ocean, protected by a seawall.

“Seawall Capital LLC,” I said.

“Seawall Capital,” Ethan repeated. “Irony noted. All right, I’ll draft the purchase agreement. Apex will be happy to unload a non‑performing note for a lump sum. We can probably get it at par or even a slight discount if we promise a quick close. I’ll wire the funds from your holding trust.”

“Do it today,” I said. “I want the papers signed by noon.”

“Melody,” Ethan said, a note of caution creeping back into his voice. “Once we execute this, there’s no going back. You’re entering into a legal conflict with your family. It’s going to get ugly. Are you sure you’re ready for the fallout? This isn’t just business.

It’s blood.”

I looked at the screenshot on my laptop—the one of my father smiling with the champagne glass, captioned #WhitakerLegacy.

“Relationships are contracts, Ethan,” I said. “They breached it first. I’m just enforcing the penalties.”

“Understood,” he said. “I’ll have the formation documents for Seawall Capital in your inbox in an hour. We’ll approach Apex as an institutional investor looking for distressed real estate assets. Your name will not appear anywhere on the paperwork visible to the Whitakers.”

“Good,” I said. “And Ethan?”

“Yeah?”

“Keep it quiet. I don’t want them to know the debt’s been sold until the legal notice hits their mailbox. I want them to think they’re still fighting Apex right up until the moment the trap shuts.”

“Phase One complete,” Ethan said. “Go get some sleep, Melody. You sound like a machine.”

“Machines don’t get their hearts broken,” I said. “They just process data.”

I hung up.

I didn’t go back to sleep.

I sat in the chair and watched the sun come up over Nashville, the sky turning from bruised purple to bleeding orange.

By noon, if everything went right, I would effectively own my parents’ house.

I would own the roof over their heads, the walls they hung their portraits on, the floorboards Sloan didn’t want scratched.

They thought they were playing a game of social climbing. They thought the goal was to look rich.

They didn’t realize the game had changed.

The goal was no longer to look rich.

The goal was to survive the audit.

And the auditor was sitting in a hotel room drinking burnt coffee, waiting for a bank transfer to clear.

I opened a new folder on my desktop and named it “Seawall Capital.” I dragged the evidence of the forgery, the Instagram screenshots, and the loan documents into it.

Then I closed the laptop.

It was time to get dressed.

I had a villa in Florida to inspect.

And I had a war to win.

The next forty‑eight hours were a blur of encrypted data transfers, wire instructions, and the kind of adrenaline most people only get from hunting big game.

I wasn’t hunting an animal.

I was hunting a contract.

I set up a command center in the living room of the Florida villa, overlooking Naples Bay. The view outside was breathtaking—a panoramic sweep of the Gulf of Mexico, turquoise water meeting a sky so blue it looked fake.

I barely looked at it.

My attention was fixed on the three monitors I’d set up on the imported teak dining table.

Ethan Cole was earning his fee. He moved with the silent lethality of a submarine.

“Apex is listening,” Ethan said over speakerphone, his voice crisp. “They’re nervous, Melody. A non‑performing loan of this size on a residential property is a stain on their quarterly report. They don’t want a judicial foreclosure in Tennessee. Takes too long. They want cash, and they want it yesterday.”

“What’s the number?” I asked, typing a command to route funds from my offshore holding in the Caymans to a domestic trust in Delaware. I was layering the money. By the time it reached the purchase account, it would be untraceable to “Melody Alvarez” on a simple search.

“They’re asking for par,” Ethan said. “Four hundred fifty plus accrued interest and penalties—roughly four eighty‑five all‑in. They’ll waive their legal fees if we close within twenty‑four hours.”

“Offer them four‑sixty flat,” I said. “Tell them Seawall Capital can wire immediately. No financing contingencies. Cash on the barrelhead. Take it or we walk, and they can spend the next eighteen months fighting my father in court.”

“Aggressive,” Ethan noted. “I like it.”

“It’s not aggressive,” I said. “It’s efficient. I know my father. If Apex sues him, he’ll counter‑sue for ‘predatory lending practices’ just to stall. He’ll drag it out. Apex knows that. I’m offering them an exit ramp.”

“I’ll make the call,” Ethan said.

I hung up and leaned back in the sleek Italian chair. The air‑conditioning in the villa whispered instead of rattling.

While Ethan wrestled with the sharks at Apex, I turned my attention to the due diligence files.

When you buy a mortgage note, you don’t just buy the debt.

You buy the file.

You buy the history.

Ethan had managed to get Apex to open their data room as a sign of good faith during negotiations.

I started combing through the collateral folder.

There was the deed to the Cedar Ridge house. Standard.

There was the appraisal, dated three years ago, inflating the value of the property by about twenty percent—likely a favor from a friendly appraiser Dale knew at the club.

Then I saw a document labeled “Supplemental Security Agreement.”

I frowned.

A standard hard‑money loan usually just takes first position on the house. Why was there supplemental security?

I opened the PDF.

It was a scanned document, the edges slightly crooked.

“Borrower pledges beneficial interest in the Riverbend Resort Development project located in Sevier County.”

I froze.

Riverbend.

I’d heard that name before—over dinner tables in hushed conversations between my father and his business associates. It was a speculative land deal, undeveloped acres near the Great Smoky Mountains that were supposed to be turned into luxury cabins for vacation rentals.

Dale had always claimed he “missed the boat” on that investment. Said he didn’t have the capital to get in.

I read further.

The legal owner of the land wasn’t Dale. It was an LLC called Blue Heron Holdings. But the agreement stated that Dale Whitaker held a silent partner option to purchase fifty percent of the equity in Blue Heron Holdings for a nominal fee of one dollar.

Effectively, he owned half the project—but he’d hidden his name behind a shell company.

I needed to know who was the face of Blue Heron Holdings. Who was helping him hide this asset.

I pulled the Tennessee business registry records.

Blue Heron Holdings.

Registered agent: Linda Vance.

The name hit me like a slap.

Linda Vance—my mother’s best friend. The woman who sat in our kitchen drinking Chardonnay and complaining about her ex‑husband. The woman who had cried on my shoulder at my grandmother’s funeral.

The picture snapped into focus.

Dale and Cynthia had money—or at least access to assets. They had bought into this land deal using funds they’d likely skimmed from the loans I was paying off. They put it in Linda’s name to keep it safe from creditors.

And from me.

If the Riverbend project took off, they’d be millionaires.

And I’d still be the dutiful daughter paying their electric bill.

None the wiser.

They weren’t just bad with money.

They were actively hoarding potential wealth while pleading poverty to their own child.

I felt a dark, cold laugh bubble up in my chest. It wasn’t funny, but the audacity was so staggering that laughter was the only physiological response available.

“You greedy bastards,” I whispered to the empty villa.

They had pledged this secret asset to Apex because they were so sure they could pay the loan back before anyone looked too closely. They gambled the house and their hidden retirement fund on a vacation to Cabo and a gambling addiction.

And now I was about to own it all.

My phone rang.

It was Ethan.

“We have a deal,” he said. “Four sixty‑five. They squeezed us for an extra five. I took it.”

“Good,” I said. “Paper it.”

“I’m sending the purchase agreement to your secure server now,” Ethan said. “Sign it and I’ll initiate the wire. Once the funds clear, Seawall Capital LLC is the holder in due course of the promissory note and the deed of trust.”

“And the supplemental security?” I asked. “The Riverbend interest?”

“It transfers with the note,” Ethan said. “If they default on the house, you can go after the land interest too. You’ve got them in a pincer movement, Melody.”

“Send the wire,” I said.

I watched the progress bar on the transfer screen.

Initiating.

Processing.

Complete.

Four hundred sixty‑five thousand dollars left my control and vanished into the accounts of Apex Private Lending Group.

A moment later, a confirmation email pinged in my inbox.

Transfer of asset confirmed – Assignor: Apex Private Lending – Assignee: Seawall Capital LLC.

I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

The dynamic of the universe had just shifted.

Ten minutes ago, I was a scorned daughter hiding in Florida.

Now I was the primary creditor of the Whitaker estate.

“What’s the next move?” Ethan asked. “Do we wait?”

“No,” I said. “We follow the letter of the law. Strict compliance. Prepare the notice of default and demand for payment, but structure it carefully.”

“Go on.”

“I want the letter to offer a forbearance option,” I said.

“You want to give them a break?” Ethan sounded surprised.

“No,” I said. “I want to give them a rope. The forbearance agreement should require full financial disclosure—every bank account, every asset, every liability. If they want to save the house, they have to show Seawall Capital everything. If they lie, it triggers immediate foreclosure and potential fraud charges.”

“I see,” Ethan said, voice filled with professional admiration. “You’re using the forbearance to force discovery without a lawsuit.”

“Exactly. I want to see if they declare the Riverbend land. If they hide it from Seawall Capital like they hid it from me, we nail them.”

“I’ll draft it,” Ethan said. “It’ll go out via certified mail tomorrow morning. They’ll have it by Thursday.”

“Perfect.”

I hung up and walked to the balcony.

The sun was beginning to set, painting the sky in violent shades of orange and purple over the Gulf.

I needed discipline.

The emotional part of me—the part that still wanted my dad to be a hero and my mom to be a nurturer—had to be put in a box and locked away.

I went back to my desk and opened a new document. I typed out a list of rules for myself.

Rule One: No verbal agreements. Everything must be in writing.

Rule Two: All phone calls must be recorded.

Rule Three: No emotional responses. Be the algorithm.

Rule Four: Remember the trash bags.

I printed the list and taped it to the side of my monitor.

Remember the trash bags.

Remember the Goodwill sticker.

Remember the broken picture frame.

That was my fuel.

I spent the rest of the evening organizing the digital files. I created a timeline of their fraud. I matched the dates of their business trips to the dates of major withdrawals. I built a case so watertight it could survive a hurricane.

I was just finishing around nine when my personal cell buzzed.

I looked at the screen.

Dad.

My heart gave a traitorous little jump. Even now, the conditioning was strong.

Pick up. Fix it. Be the good girl.

I stared at the phone.

I let it ring once, twice, three times.

I reached out and tapped the record icon on the app I’d installed earlier.

Then I answered.

“Hello,” I said.

Not “Hi, Dad.” Just a neutral greeting.

“Melody!” His voice was loud, breathless. In the background I heard dishes clattering, my mother’s voice shrill.

“Where the hell are you? I’ve been calling for two days. The voicemail on your work line says you’re on leave.”

“I’m taking some personal time,” I said. “What do you want?”