Chapter Twelve

The morning heat had already turned the third-floor apartment into a humid pressure cooker, the thick air clinging to skin like a wet blanket.

Little Leo was awake now, his whimpering escalating into full-blown, hysterical wailing. The six-year-old sat on the edge of the stained couch, his face bright red, rubbing his swollen eyes with tiny fists as sweat trickled down his neck. The unbearable temperature and the loud, aggressive shouting match from earlier had completely terrified him.

"Oh, shut up, boy! You are doing too much!" Susan screamed, her voice cracking with pure, razor-thin irritation as she swung around from the window. She clutched her damp collar, fanning herself frantically with a crumpled piece of mail. "My head is splitting into two, and all I hear is this constant screaming! Do something about him!"

"Take your hands off your ears and act like a human being for once in your life!" Veronica barked, stepping into Susan’s space with a menacing glare. "Are you not his mother?! Look at the child! The boy is exhausted and sweating to death, and all you can do is screech at him like a wild animal?!"

"Don't you dare talk to me about being a mother, Mummy!" Susan wailed back, throwing her hands into the air, completely unbothered by her mother's stern reprimand. She wiped a line of sweat from her lip with the back of her wrist, her eyes wildly darting around the filthy, ruined living room. "I can't take this heat anymore! My skin is breaking out, my dress is ruined, and this embarrassment is getting to be too much! Look at us! Sitting in the dark like abandoned stray dogs!"

"Lower your voice, you foolish girl!" Veronica hissed, glancing nervously toward the front door as if the neighbors could hear every word. "Do you want the entire building to gather at our door again?!"

"Let them gather! What difference does it make?!" Susan sobbed, snatching her dead smartphone off the glass coffee table and thrusting it directly into Veronica's palm. "Where Vanessa is, you and Andrea better get her back here! Go and drag her back to her senses, make her pay this back-rent, and get the power turned back on! Because I am not staying in this oven another day! Here, go charge my phone at the neighbors!"

Veronica stared at her daughter’s dead phone in her hand, the cold glass contrasting sharply with her damp skin. She let out a deep, weary sigh that seemed to age her ten years in a single second. "You expect me to walk down that hallway like a beggar?" Veronica whispered, though her voice lacked its usual unyielding armor.

"If you don't go, we will rot here!" Susan yelled back, collapsing onto the arm of the sofa and burying her face in her sticky hands as Leo continued to cry softly beside her. "We need light! We need water! Go to that woman down the hall—the one with the small generator!"

Veronica smoothed down her rumpled dress, gripped the dead phone tightly in her fist, and turned toward the front door.

"I am going to the neighbor to get this phone charged," Veronica muttered, her tone dropping into a bitter, venomous hush. "Watch the boy and stop screaming before I slap some sense into you."

Without waiting for a reply, Veronica collected the phone, pulled open the heavy front door, and left, shutting the door behind her with a sharp, resonant click.

Inside the apartment, the sudden departure left behind a heavy, suffocating silence, broken only by Leo's muffled whimpers and the rhythmic, hollow ticking of a wall clock that was running down its final battery reserves.

Andrea hadn't said a word during the entire explosive spat between his mother and sister. He sat motionless on the arm of the worn armchair, staring blankly at the dark screen of his own smartphone resting in his lap.

He was completely lost in thought.

"Andrea, say something!" Susan snapped from the couch, glaring across the room at him. "Are you just going to sit there like a statue while everything falls apart around us? Speak!"

Andrea didn't even turn his head. "Be quiet, Susan," he said, his voice quiet, flat, and hollow.

"Be quiet?!" Susan scoffed loudly. "The landlord gave us seven days! Seven days, Andrea! Where are we going to go when those men come back with padlocks? Are you going to sleep on the pavement with Leo?!"

"I said shut your mouth!" Andrea suddenly roared, turning his bloodshot eyes onto her with a flash of genuine fury. "Do you think I am blind?! Do you think I don't know what is at stake here?!"

Susan flinched back against the cushions, startled by his sudden outburst, but quickly crossed her arms with a defensive glare. "Then do something! Call her! Fix it!"

"How can I call her when the lines are dead?!" Andrea spat back, trembling as he gestured wildly with his unpowered phone. "Mummy went to charge the device. The moment it comes back on, this situation will be resolved. So sit down, take care of your son, and let me think!"

Susan muttered a curse under her breath and pulled little Leo into her lap, turning her back to him in silence.

Andrea turned back to his dark screen, squeezing his eyelids shut as the image of Mr. Gable handing him the formal legal eviction notice kept flashing behind his eyes, alongside the cold, unbothered face of the process server. But even more disturbing than the seven-day countdown was the sudden, uncharacteristic shift in his wife.

Vanessa was behaving completely abnormally.

For three years, Vanessa had been obedient, quiet, and pathetically eager to please him and his family. She was the docile heiress who quietly handled his corporate expenses, paid for their apartment without complaint, and smiled meekly whenever his mother criticized her background or demeanor. She was the woman who would stand at the stove for hours preparing meals his mother approved of, never once raising her voice, never once demanding gratitude. She had never cut off a phone line. She had never ignored a call. She had never left them waiting overnight in forty-degree heat while she slept comfortably in her family's mansion.

*What is wrong with her?* Andrea thought, his jaw clenching as he squeezed his fingers around the edges of his phone until his knuckles turned ghostly white. *Did someone put ideas in her head? Did her lawyers tell her to play hardball? Is she trying to play a petty little mind game to see how long I’ll chase her?*

He remembered how she had looked at him during their last encounter—that subtle, unreadable quietness in her eyes that he had mistaken for submission. Now, a cold prickle of doubt tried to creep up his spine, but his pride instantly crushed it.

He let out a sharp, mocking breath through his nose, shaking his head as a familiar, dark arrogance began to rebuild itself inside his mind.

It didn't matter. None of this temporary madness mattered.

Vanessa was his wife. She loved him, depended on him, and had tied her entire social identity to being Mrs. Andrea Tinnons. She didn't have the stomach for real malice. This absurd little rebellion was just a childish cry for attention—a desperate attempt to make him prove how much he needed her before she handed over the key fobs to the hilltop estate. She was probably sitting over there right now, staring at her own phone, waiting anxiously for his name to pop up on the screen so she could demand an apology and play the victim.

He reassured himself with a smug, cruel smile, leaning his head back against the wall despite the prickling sweat on his neck.

The moment his mother brought back that charged phone and he found a way to power his line back on, he would call her right back to her senses. He would use his stern, authoritative executive voice, command her to meet him at the main gate, and personally bring her back into line. He would make her understand that playing games with his family's comfort came with a severe price. She would bow her head, apologize for this ridiculous, humiliating stunt, and transfer the money for the landlord before the sun set today.

He just needed that phone screen to light back up.