Kyle.
I answered.
“What did you mean?” he demanded.
“You’ve been staying at Mom and Dad’s place for three months, right?”
“So?”
“So you convinced them to lock out someone who legally owns twenty-five percent of the property.”
Silence.
Then Kyle laughed.
“You’re bluffing.”
“Check the county records.”
He hung up.
Seven minutes later, Mom called.
Her voice was different.
“Ethan… your brother says there’s something about the deed.”
“There is.”
“What exactly are you planning to do?”
I looked at the documents coming warm from the printer.
“First,” I said, “I’m going to find out why Kyle transferred forty-six thousand dollars from Dad’s account.”
Another silence.
This one lasted longer.
Then Mom whispered something I hadn’t expected.
“Ethan… it wasn’t forty-six thousand.”
I stopped breathing.
“What?”
Her voice cracked.
→
“It was almost three hundred thousand,” she sobbed, the words tumbling out like a dam breaking under pressure. “He said… he said he was investing it in a joint trust to protect Dad from Medicaid clawbacks. He told me you were planning to put Dad in a state home and sell the house out from under us. Ethan, I was terrified… so I signed the power of attorney papers he brought home last month.”
The print shop hummed around me, completely oblivious to the bottom dropping out of my world.
Three hundred thousand dollars. That wasn’t just a missing chunk of an investment portfolio—that was Dad’s entire retirement, the money meant to cover his physical therapy, his medication, and their remaining mortgage.
“Where is Kyle right now, Mom?” I asked, my voice deadly calm.
“He’s… he’s in the garage. He packed two duffel bags as soon as you mentioned the deed. He said he was going to stay with a friend, but he’s frantic. Ethan, please… what do we do?”
“Stay in your room, Mom. Lock the bedroom door. I’ll be there in four minutes.”
I hung up, grabbed the warm stack of paper from the tray, and sprinted through the rain to my car.
As a legal co-owner of the property, I didn’t need a key code to deal with a trespasser. I dialed 911 through my car’s Bluetooth as the engine roared to life.
“Arlington County Emergency,” the dispatcher answered.
“My name is Ethan Mercer. I am the co-owner of 1412 Sycamore Ridge. My brother, Kyle Mercer, has fraudulently drained several hundred thousand dollars from my incapacitated father through coerced power of attorney, and he is currently fleeing the scene with stolen assets. I am en route, and I need police units dispatched immediately.”
By the time my tires squealed against the curb outside my parents’ driveway, Kyle was throwing a black duffel bag into the trunk of his BMW.
I pulled my car across the end of the driveway, completely blocking his exit.
Kyle froze under the harsh glare of my headlights. Rain poured down his face, pasting his hair to his forehead. When he saw me step out of the car holding the thick manila folder, his panic turned into sheer, feral desperation.
“Move the car, Ethan!” he screamed over the storm. “Move it or I swear to God I’ll ram right through you!”
“Go ahead,” I said, walking toward him. “The deed is right here. The audit trail for your shell company is right here. And the police are already on their way.”
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