Chapter 11 - The Midnight Summons
The police arrived forty minutes later, their cruiser's light bar throwing dull red and blue flashes against our neighborhood's quiet lawns. Officer Higgins, a tired-looking man with a graying mustache, took notes while a forensic tech dusted the frame of the mutilated photograph for latent prints.
"Without cameras directly pointing at the driveway, it’s tough," Higgins said frankly, looking over his notepad at Ryan and me. "Your neighbors down the street have a Ring doorbell, but the angle only catches the end of the cul-de-sac. We saw a silver sedan pull in around 2:15 PM and leave four minutes later. No plate visible. Does anyone in your family drive a silver Mercedes or BMW?"
"Eleanor drives a silver C-Class," Ryan answered without hesitation. "And my brother Brandon borrows it constantly."
"We'll pay them a visit," Higgins said, snapping his notebook shut. "In the meantime, file an incident report, and if I were you, I’d invest in outdoor cameras yesterday. People who do this kind of personal, targeted property damage rarely stop after one attempt."
After the officers left, Ryan spent three grueling hours scrubbing the red paint from the garage door with industrial solvent, the fumes burning our noses. By nine o’clock, Lily was tucked into bed, completely oblivious to the chaos after we lied and told her a stray dog had knocked over some old flowerpots.
I was sitting at the kitchen island, staring into a cup of chamomile tea that had long gone cold, when the doorbell rang.
The chime was so sharp, so sudden, that I spilled tea across the quartz counter. Ryan instantly stepped out of the hallway, a heavy metal flashlight gripped firmly in his right hand.
"Wait," I whispered, hurrying behind him. "Look through the peephole."
Ryan peered through the glass. His brow furrowed. "It's not them."
He unlocked the deadbolt and pulled the door open, keeping the chain engaged. Standing on the welcome mat was a young man wearing a wrinkled suit, carrying a black leather portfolio under his arm.
"Ryan Mitchell? Sarah Mitchell?" the man asked in a clinical, emotionless monotone.
"Who's asking?" Ryan replied defensively.
"Process server," the man said, sliding a thick manila envelope through the small opening of the door. "You’ve been served. Have a good evening."
The man turned around and practically jogged back to his car, vanishing into the darkness before Ryan could even process the words.
Ryan undid the chain, picked up the heavy packet from the floor, and brought it to the kitchen table. The return address on the cover sheet bore the gilded embossed logo of *Sterling, Vance & Keller, Attorneys at Law*—the most ruthless, expensive corporate litigation firm in the county.
"What is this?" my voice shook as Ryan tore the seal open. "What could they possibly sue us for?"
Ryan flipped through the legal jargon, his face draining of color until he looked like a ghost.
"Fraud," Ryan whispered, his hands trembling as he read the allegations. "Eleanor... she’s suing us for four hundred and fifty thousand dollars. She claims the down payment she gave us for this house seven years ago wasn’t a wedding gift. She claims it was an interest-bearing personal loan. And she’s demanding immediate, full repayment within thirty days, or foreclosure on our home."
Attached to the filing was a promissory note. At the bottom of the last page, inked in dark blue ballpoint, was Ryan's signature.
May you like
Except Ryan had never signed a promissory note in his life.
***
