Chapter 1 - The Count
"Where is Maya's ticket?"
The sentence did not start as a scream. It landed like a cleaver hitting a butcher’s block—flat, heavy, and final.
Andre stood dead center in the foyer, the white glare of the afternoon sun slicing through the blinds behind him. In his thick right hand, three printed sheets of glossy airline vouchers rustled slightly. Just three. He stared at the names printed in bold ink: ANDRE CARTER. TANYA VAUGHN-CARTER. DEVIN CARTER.
Down on the hardwood, on her knees beside a massive plum-colored Samsonite, Tanya froze. Her hand stayed clamped to a brass zipper pull. She didn't look up immediately. She took a breath through her nose, smoothed the hem of her cream knit sweater, and said, "Andre, please. Put the papers down. We need to talk about that in private."
"I am not going into another room to ask you a question that only needs one name," Andre said. His voice was dropping an octave, losing every trace of the easy laugh he’d carried through the front door five minutes ago. "Where. Is. Maya’s. Ticket?"
Behind him on the landing, the quiet thump-thump-thump of small rubber wheels against oak treads came to a halt. Thirteen-year-old Maya stood frozen on the fifth step from the bottom, both hands gripping the telescoping handle of her silver carry-on. She was wearing her favorite grey hoodie—the one Andre bought her for track season—and a pair of brand-new sneakers she had kept clean for weeks specifically for this flight to Honolulu.
Across the room, sixteen-year-old Devin stopped fiddling with the blue memory-foam travel pillow around his neck. He looked up from his phone, sensing the sudden drop in cabin pressure inside the house.
Tanya slowly rose to her feet, wiping nonexistent dust off her designer jeans. She pasted on a strained, customer-service smile that never reached her eyes. "Look, the prices surged overnight. You know how the algorithms work during spring break. The budget got ridiculously tight. I booked what was practical. I booked what we could actually afford."
Andre took two slow steps forward. He was a tall man, broad-shouldered, but he rarely used his size to intimidate. Right now, he didn't have to. The pure, unadulterated shock radiating from him was enough to fill every inch of the high-ceilinged room.
"Practical?" Andre whispered, though the word scraped the walls like sandpaper. "You booked a ticket for yourself. You booked a ticket for Devin. You booked a ticket for me. And you left my daughter off the manifest?"
"She isn't left off anything maliciously, Andre! Somebody had to stay behind," Tanya snapped, her mask slipping as her tone grew sharp and defensive. "We can take her next time. It makes more sense this way!"
"Why?" Andre asked, his eyes narrowing into cold slits. "Why was she the one who had to stay?"
From the stairs, a soft, brittle voice cut through the air before Tanya could spin another lie.
"Funny how I’m always the expensive one," Maya said.
May you like
Andre’s heart snapped in his chest. He turned his head toward the stairs, but before he could even reach out to his little girl, Tanya let out a frustrated, dismissive sigh that lit the fuse on the entire house.
"Don't be dramatic, Maya," Tanya said coldly. "Go back upstairs. Right now."
