There it was—the truth of how they had always seen me.
Not as a daughter.
As an asset.
A long-term investment finally delivering returns.
“You didn’t invest in me,” I said. “You survived me, and I survived you. That’s all.”
“We’re not here to fight,” he said.
“No,” I replied. “You’re here to collect.”
James finally lifted his eyes from his phone. “I gave up my lease,” he said casually. “We moved out this morning.”
“The lender is getting aggressive,” my mother added, speaking as though she were mentioning a small inconvenience. “James is in real trouble.”
She looked at me the way she always did whenever a conversation shifted toward what she expected from me.
“How much?” I asked.
My father slowly rotated the scotch in his glass
“One hundred forty-eight thousand dollars.”
The figure lingered in the room.
“He leveraged himself for some crypto scheme,” my father continued. “Private lender. They’ve stopped sending letters and started sending pictures. Pictures of James. His car. His building.”
For the first time, I saw real fear flicker beneath James’s usual arrogance.
It unsettled me more than I wanted to admit.
“I cannot move one hundred fifty thousand dollars out of my business overnight without crippling operations,” I said carefully. “Payroll, port fees, fuel, dry dock deposits—everything is tied up.”
