Chapter 3 - Digging Up the Dirt
The rain began to fall as I pulled my black pickup truck into the subterranean parking garage of my downtown high-rise building.
The apartment was my sanctuary. It sat on the fourteenth floor, overlooking the city skyline, featuring floor-to-ceiling windows, polished concrete floors, and absolute, golden silence. I had bought it outright after my third deployment, using my saved operational pay and the proceeds from a modest inheritance my grandmother had left me. It was clean, secure, and entirely mine.
As soon as I locked the reinforced front door behind me, I kicked off my combat boots and went straight to work.
I walked into my home office, unlocked the steel fireproof safe beneath my desk, and pulled out my encrypted secure laptop. I opened a clean digital file, labeled it VANCE_FINANCIAL_AUDIT, and initiated a background query through my authorized federal databases.
For the eight months we had been married, Jackson had portrayed himself as a successful real estate consultant. He wore three-thousand-dollar suits, drove a leased European sports car, and talked constantly about high-level investment deals his father's firm, Vance Development Group, was securing across the state.
But my years in CID had taught me one fundamental truth: people who brag loudest about wealth are usually the ones drowning in debt.
And Genesis’s sudden, arrogant demand for my apartment—along with an absurd $1,200 monthly allowance—wasn't just mother-in-law entitlement. It was a desperate cash grab.
By 0200 hours, the screen illuminated my face with dark blue data streams.
I stared at the tax filings and property deeds popping up on my monitor.
"Well, well, Jackson," I murmured to the empty room, taking a sip of black coffee. "You're worse at math than you are at fighting."
The records spoke loud and clear.
Vance Development Group was three weeks away from total financial insolvency. Arthur Vance had leveraged three separate commercial properties to secure a four-million-dollar private loan from an offshore investment firm linked to illegal gambling syndicates in Miami. The interest payments alone were eighty thousand dollars a month—and Arthur hadn't paid them in sixty days.
Worse yet, Genesis’s house on Elm Street wasn't suffering from "difficult stairs." The county tax assessor had placed a primary tax lien on the property forty-eight hours ago. It was scheduled for public auction in thirty days unless she produced fifty thousand dollars in back taxes.
They didn't just want my downtown apartment as a cozy place for Genesis to live.
They wanted my unencumbered, zero-mortgage deed so they could use it as collateral for a emergency high-interest loan to keep Arthur out of prison. And the $1,200 monthly demand from me was designed to cover the interest on Genesis's personal credit card debts.
They had viewed me as an easy mark—a quiet military woman who worked long hours, kept her head down, and would surrender her life's savings out of obligation to her new husband.
My phone buzzed on the desk.
It was an incoming text message from an unknown number.
You made a massive mistake tonight, Evelyn. Dad has friends in the state prosecutor's office. You have 24 hours to hand over the keys to the apartment and sign the quitclaim deed, or we file a complaint with your commanding officer for spousal abuse and assault. Let's see how long your military career lasts when the news gets out.
I stared at the screen for five seconds, my eyes cold and unreadable.
May you like
Then I took a screenshot, backed it up to three separate cloud drives, and forwarded it directly to Special Agent Marcus Cole, my senior partner at the CID Field Office at Fort Meade.
I attached a brief note: Marcus, initiate a formal file on Jackson Vance and Arthur Vance. Extortion, fraud, and attempted coercive land seizure. Let's go to work.
