I started building a team of veterans I knew, people who understood what it meant to hold their nerve when things went sideways. I didn’t pitch them jobs, I pitched them a mission and a place where people actually kept their word. We were good at what we did, which surprised no one who had ever worn a uniform, and word of our reliability spread quickly.
About ten months in, I moved the company into an office with actual windows and a view of the Austin skyline. There were whiteboards covered in notes and a photo of Terrence and Mia on my desk that no longer felt like a shrine. I was reviewing a report when I got a text from a cousin saying that Tyler’s bar deal had collapsed and my parents were blaming everyone.
I stared at the message while the scent of coffee drifted from the break room, feeling a sense of alertness rather than satisfaction. People like my parents never learned from disaster, they only went shopping for a new culprit to blame for their failures. My family had started talking, and I knew they were planning to drag my life through the mud to save their own.
Part 6
The smear campaign started quietly with relatives stopping their replies to my messages and liking my mother’s cryptic social media posts. My Aunt Martha, the keeper of all family mythology, finally called me and skipped the greetings to talk about my business. She told me that my parents were in a terrible bind because of Tyler’s situation and that I was the reason for it.
“I’m told you refused to help when you easily could have,” Martha snapped over the phone.
I tried to explain the truth about the funeral and the Hawaii trip, but she told me that my mother claimed I always exaggerated for attention. I realized then that my parents had gotten to the jury box before I even knew there was a trial happening. Martha told me not to let money change me and reminded me that blood was always supposed to be thicker than water.
Later that evening, Silas emailed me a screenshot from a neighborhood Facebook group where my mother had written a long, dramatic post. She wrote about a daughter who had turned cruel after coming into money and parents who were being left behind in their time of need. The worst part was her praying that I would remember I was a daughter before I was a captain.