Chapter 3 - The Expulsion of the Parasites
The grand living room of the Bayside Heights mansion was a sea of velvet dresses, custom tuxedos, and crystal glasses that caught the light of the imported Italian chandeliers. At the center of the room stood a fountain sculpted from white granite, circulating scented water.
The music stopped the moment I walked through the double arches.
I didn't look like the people in the room. I was wearing my grease-stained tactical boots, my denim shirt faded from the desert sun, and my skin was burned to a deep, weather-beaten bronze. But it was the sight of Sarah, clinging to my side in her torn dress, and Jamie, looking terrified in my arms, that turned the room into a stone-cold silence.
“Who is that?” a man near the piano whispered, holding a plate of caviar.
“Good evening, everyone,” I said, my voice cutting through the vast space like an iron wedge. “My name is David Vance. I am the owner of this house. I am the man who paid for the floor you are standing on, the wine you are drinking, and the jewelry my mother is currently wearing.”
Gertrude rushed into the room behind me, her face flushed with an ugly, dark purple tint. “David, please! Stop this madness! Guests, I am so sorry—my son has just returned from an extended period abroad, and he is... he is not well. The heat must have—”
“The heat didn't do anything to my mind, Gertrude,” I said, using her first name for the first time in my thirty-one years. I looked around the room, meeting the eyes of the wealthy neighbors who had spent years enjoying my absence. “My mother and sister have been using the money I sent for my wife and child to throw these parties. While you were eating five-hundred-dollar oysters, my son was eating garbage in the service kitchen. This party is over. You have three minutes to clear out before I call the Bayside Heights police for trespassing.”
A murmur of shock rippled through the crowd. A man in a tailored blue blazer stepped forward, his expression arrogant. “Look here, buddy, I don't know who you think you are, but you can’t speak to Gertrude like that—”
I didn't let him finish. I stepped down from the marble tier, my shadow falling over him. I didn't raise my fist; I just looked at him with the eyes of a man who had survived an oil well blowout in the middle of the Empty Quarter.
“Two minutes,” I said softly.
The man’s arrogance vanished. He looked at his wife, grabbed her coat from the back of a chair, and headed for the front door without another word. The rest of the room followed like a dam breaking. Within ninety seconds, the grand living room was empty, the front door swinging open against the cold night wind, leaving dozens of half-empty champagne flutes sitting on the mahogany tables like headstones.
Prudence dropped onto the silk sofa, burying her face in her hands. “You’ve ruined us,” she sobbed. “Everyone saw this. We’ll never be invited anywhere again.”
“You won't have time to go anywhere, Prudence,” I said, turning to look at my mother, who was leaning against the granite fountain, her chest heaving.
“David,” Gertrude said, her voice dropping into a low, manipulative register. “You’re angry. I understand that. But you must think of the logistics. We did what we had to do to keep the property value up. Sarah... Sarah doesn't understand this kind of life. She didn't grow up with money. She was content staying in the back—”
“She was content because you took her phone, didn't you?” Sarah’s voice broke through the room, small but sharp as a needle. She stepped out from behind my shoulder, her thin hands trembling as she pointed at Gertrude. “You told me David had stopped sending the money. You told me he had found someone else in the Middle East. You said if I left this house, you’d use your lawyers to take Jamie away from me because I had no income.”
The silence that followed was heavier than the desert sand.
I looked at Gertrude. Her eyes shifted to the floor, her silence an absolute confession.
“You told her I abandoned her,” I whispered, the realization setting into my bones like ice. “While you were telling me on the phone that she was out at the salon, you were telling her that I had forgotten her name.”
“David, it was for the best—” Gertrude started.
“Tony!” I shouted, calling out into the hallway where my private driver from the airport was waiting. He stepped into the room, a broad-shouldered man from the old neighborhood who knew exactly what kind of work I did.
“Yes, Mr. Vance?”
“Take my wife and son to the Bayside Grand Hotel,” I ordered, handing him my black Amex card—the one my mother didn't know existed because I had kept it linked to my corporate account in Riyadh. “Get them the executive suite. Order every single thing on the room service menu that my son wants. Call a private doctor to examine them both tonight. I’ll be there in an hour.”
“You got it, boss,” Tony said, gently taking Jamie from my arms and guiding Sarah toward the door. Sarah looked back at me once, her eyes filled with a mixture of terror and relief.
“I’ll be right behind you, Sarah,” I said softly.
May you like
The moment the front door clicked shut behind them, the house became a vault. I turned back to the two women who shared my blood, my fingers tightening around the straps of my luggage.
“The locks will be changed by eight o'clock tomorrow morning,” I said. “Your clothes will be left in trash bags on the curb. If either of you sets foot on this property after sunrise, the security system will treat you like the thieves you are.”
