PART 3
I almost laughed.
My laptop had been worth $3,200. My business depended on it. My clients depended on it. And somehow, my father believed I was the one who didn’t understand what had happened.
“Then explain it to me,” I said. “I’m listening.”
Dad walked toward my kitchen counter and put his phone down.
“Valerie was upset. She said you had been disrespectful to her.”
“Disrespectful?”
“She told me you had been making comments about her financial situation. She said you embarrassed her in front of Zayn.”
I stared at him.
“By asking her to repay the $4,800 she borrowed?”
He didn’t answer.
“Did she tell you she never used that money for Zayn’s braces?”
“That’s between you and your sister.”
“No, Dad. It became your business when you stood on your porch and watched her tell your grandson to destroy my property.”
His jaw tightened.
“He’s fourteen, Heath. He’s a child. You shouldn’t be making this into some enormous family scandal.”
I slowly turned my tablet toward him again.
“Your daughter gave him the order. You watched. And now you’re standing in my apartment asking me to repair your website.”
Dad’s expression hardened.
“That website is important to my business.”
“So was my laptop.”
He opened his mouth, but I continued.
“You know what the difference is? I built your website for free. I maintained it for five years. I paid for the hosting. I fixed your email problems at midnight. I even spent weekends updating your service pages because you said you couldn’t afford another employee.”
I paused.
“And when my equipment was destroyed, nobody even asked whether I could still work.”
Dad looked away.
“I didn’t know you were going to shut everything down.”
“I didn’t shut anything down that belonged to you. I ended the services I was paying for. Your business records are still there. Your website files are still backed up. You can hire someone else to take over.”
“You’re being unreasonable.”
“No. I’m finally being reasonable with myself.”
He picked up his phone.
“Valerie is coming over. We need to settle this.”
I shook my head.
“There is nothing to settle today.”
Dad’s face turned red.
“You’re going to sit there and let your sister’s business collapse over a computer?”
I looked at him.
“She didn’t destroy a computer, Dad. She destroyed the equipment I used to earn my living. And she did it because she believed nobody would hold her responsible.”
He didn’t respond.
Instead, he walked toward my front door.
Before leaving, he turned around.
“Your mother would be ashamed of this.”
That sentence stopped me.
Not because I believed him.
Because he had used my mother’s memory to make me feel guilty.
I stood there quietly.
Then I reached into my wallet and pulled out the small purple butterfly sticker.
It was slightly bent around one edge, but still recognizable.
I placed it on the kitchen counter.
“Mom gave me this when I started my business,” I said. “She told me to fly.”
Dad stared at it.
“She believed I could build something with my own hands. She believed I deserved to be proud of myself.”
My voice became quieter.
“And you watched someone destroy that dream in your driveway.”
Dad looked down.
For the first time since entering my apartment, he had nothing to say.
He left without another word.
But the real trouble was only beginning.
At 8:03 that morning, my phone started vibrating.
It was Aunt Phyllis.
I answered.
“Heath, honey, are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Aunt Phyllis.”
“I just watched the video again. I cannot believe what Valerie said.”
I leaned against the kitchen counter.
“Neither can I.”
There was a short silence.
Then she asked something I hadn’t expected.
“Did you know she was doing something similar with your father’s business?”
I straightened.
“What do you mean?”
Aunt Phyllis lowered her voice.
“Your father called me last month. He was complaining that business had slowed down. He said customers weren’t returning calls. Valerie told everyone you had stopped helping him because you were jealous of her.”
I closed my eyes.
“That’s not true.”
“I know that now.”
She continued.
“But there’s something else. Your cousin Daniel told me that Valerie had been telling people she was going to take over your father’s company.”
I looked at the wall.
“Take over?”
“She said your father was getting older and needed someone responsible to manage things. She claimed she had already been handling the customer inquiries for months.”
My stomach tightened.
I opened my laptop—my backup laptop, which I kept for emergencies—and logged into the archived server records.
There it was.
The suspicious forwarding rule.
The dates.
The messages.
The unauthorized changes.
I had originally assumed Valerie was simply trying to redirect inquiries toward herself.
But Aunt Phyllis’s words made me reconsider everything.
“Did she say anything about buying the company?” I asked.
Aunt Phyllis hesitated.
“Actually, yes. She mentioned that your father might transfer the business to her eventually.”
I looked at the server logs again.
For six months, Valerie had been receiving customer inquiries that belonged to Dad’s business.
She had also intercepted potential IT contracts addressed to me.
And she had been telling relatives that I was unreliable.
The pieces were beginning to fit together.
“Thank you for telling me,” I said.
“Heath?”
“Yes?”
“Please don’t let them convince you that you’re the problem.”
I swallowed.
“I won’t.”
After hanging up, I spent the next two hours reviewing everything I had saved.
I found twenty-three intercepted customer inquiries.
Nine had been forwarded to Valerie’s personal email.
Seven had been deleted from the original inbox.
Four had been answered by Valerie.
Three had never received a response.
One of the forwarded messages contained a request for a $14,000 landscaping contract.
The customer had asked for an estimate three times.
Valerie had replied only once.
“Unfortunately, we are not accepting new commercial projects at this time.”
But Dad’s company had been accepting commercial projects.
I knew because I had updated that exact service page two months earlier.
Then I found something even more disturbing.
A document had been uploaded to the website’s administrative folder.
Its title was:
Overton Lawn Care — Management Transition Proposal.
I downloaded a copy.
The document listed Valerie as the proposed new managing director.
It included a plan to transfer customer accounts, email access, and administrative control to her.
There was also a section titled:
Technical Support and Existing Administrator Removal.
My name appeared underneath.
The proposal described me as an unreliable contractor who had become emotionally difficult and should be removed from all company systems.
I read the paragraph twice.
Then I noticed the date.
It had been created three weeks before the driveway incident.
Three weeks before my laptop was destroyed.
I sat back in my chair.
The destruction of my laptop wasn’t just an angry family moment.
Valerie had been planning to take control of Dad’s business, and my continued access to the systems was apparently an obstacle.
I didn’t know whether Dad had approved the proposal.
But I knew I needed to find out.
At 11:26, my phone rang again.
This time, it was Valerie.
I let it ring twice before answering.
“What do you want?” I asked.
She didn’t bother with a greeting.
“What did you tell Aunt Phyllis?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why is she calling me and asking about the website?”
“Maybe because she watched the video.”
Valerie sighed dramatically.
“You’re unbelievable. You always have to make everything about yourself.”
I looked at the butterfly sticker on the counter.
“You ordered Zayn to destroy my laptop.”
“Don’t start.”
“Why did you do it?”
“Because you needed to learn something.”
“What exactly?”
“That you can’t keep acting like you’re better than everyone because you know how to fix computers.”
I almost couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“Valerie, you intercepted my client inquiries.”
Silence.
A long silence.
Then she said, “What are you talking about?”
“I have the server logs. Twenty-three customer inquiries. Your email address. Your replies. The management transition proposal.”
Her voice changed.
“How did you get that?”
“From the system I built and maintained.”
“You had no right to look through my emails!”
“They were company inquiries stored on a company website. And the forwarding rule was installed on a system I administered.”
She began speaking faster.
“You don’t understand. Dad asked me to help him. He wanted someone else handling things because you were becoming difficult.”
“Did Dad approve the proposal?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“Did he?”
“You’re trying to turn everyone against me!”
I took a breath.
“Valerie, I haven’t told anyone anything except what the records show.”
She laughed bitterly.
“You think people are going to believe a computer file over me?”
I glanced at the family group chat.
Thirty-one people had already watched the video.
Some had responded with support.
Others were still silent.
“I don’t need anyone to believe me,” I said. “The records speak for themselves.”
Then I ended the call.
At 12:15, a message appeared in the family group chat.
It was from my cousin Daniel.
“Everyone, I think we need to talk about something else. Valerie told me last month that Heath was stealing customers from Dad’s business. She said she had evidence.”
Aunt Phyllis replied immediately.
“Did she show you anything?”
Daniel answered.
“No. She just said Heath was redirecting customers to his own company.”
I stared at the message.
Valerie had not only intercepted my professional opportunities.
She had apparently been telling people I was stealing from my own father.
Then another message appeared.
This time, it was from Uncle Robert.
“I received a call from Valerie two weeks ago. She asked if I would be interested in investing in a new lawn-care company she planned to start with Dennis. She said the existing business needed restructuring.”
I read that message several times.
A new company?
With Dad?
Had he been planning to replace the business I had maintained for five years?
Before I could respond, my phone rang again.
Dad.
I answered.
“Have you spoken to Valerie?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“She says you’ve been digging through private documents.”
“I found a management transition proposal on the website.”
There was silence.
Then Dad said something that made my entire body go cold.
“That document wasn’t supposed to be on the server.”
I gripped the phone.
“What?”
“Listen to me, Heath. You need to stop looking into this.”
“Why?”
“Because there are things you don’t understand.”
“Then explain them.”
He took a deep breath.
“Valerie was supposed to take over the business eventually. I was planning to retire.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you were never interested in running a lawn-care company.”
“That’s true. But I built the website. I maintained the customer system. I handled the technical side. You could have told me what was happening.”
“Valerie said you would interfere.”
I closed my eyes.
There it was.
The truth, finally coming from his mouth.
“Did you know she was intercepting customer inquiries?”
“No.”
“Did you know she was telling people I was stealing customers?”
“I didn’t know about that.”
“Did you know she ordered Zayn to smash my laptop?”
He didn’t answer.
I waited.
Finally, he said, “I knew she was angry. I didn’t think she would actually do it.”
I felt something inside me settle.
Not anger.
Not sadness.
Something colder.
My father had known enough to understand that something terrible was happening, but he had chosen not to protect me.
And now he was asking me to protect his business.
“Dad,” I said quietly, “I’m not going to delete those records.”
“I didn’t ask you to delete them.”
“You just told me to stop looking.”
“Because this is becoming ugly.”
“It became ugly when your daughter ordered her son to destroy my property.”
He exhaled.
Then he said the words that changed everything.
“Valerie told me she had already spoken to a lawyer about transferring the company. She said she had an agreement with you.”
I went completely still.
“What agreement?”
“She said you signed something giving her control over the website and customer database.”
I stared at my screen.
“I never signed anything.”
Dad’s voice dropped.
“Then why does she have a copy with your name on it?”
My heart began beating faster.
“What copy?”
“I don’t know. She showed me a document.”
“Send it to me.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t have it anymore.”
I looked at the management transition proposal on my laptop.
