These were just the opening shots meant to test my defenses. The real artillery barrage was yet to come.
When they couldn’t get through to my personal line, they escalated.
Later that afternoon, the bar’s old landline phone began to ring. It was a shrill, insistent sound that cut through the low murmur of the afternoon regulars. Jax looked at me from the other end of the bar, and I gave him a slight nod.
I walked over and picked up the receiver.
“Ranger’s Rest,” I said, my voice even.
“Lauren.”
The roar on the other end was pure violence.
“You think you can hide from me? You’re an ungrateful, selfish child. After all the years I worked my fingers to the bone to raise you, this is how you repay me? You’re going to let your own mother and father starve and freeze in the dark?”
It was a classic barrage of guilt and anger.
Before I could even think of a response, not that I planned to give one, the phone was snatched on the other end. My mother’s voice, thick with manufactured tears, replaced his.
“Lauren, honey, how could you be so cruel?” she sobbed. “What did we ever do to deserve this? Your father was just a little upset. You know how he gets. Is that any reason to treat us like enemies? We’re your family.”
It was a perfectly coordinated attack.
The shock-and-awe assault from my father followed by the psychological warfare from my mother. One plays the aggressor, the other plays the victim. They had been running this play on me my entire life.
I stood there listening to her practiced sobs, feeling nothing but a profound, weary disappointment.
I didn’t say a word.
I simply placed the receiver back in its cradle, gently cutting off her performance midsob.
When direct assault failed, they opened a second front.
Public opinion.
An hour later, my phone rang again. A number I recognized.
My Aunt Mary.
I took a deep breath and answered.
“Lauren, thank God. Your mother called me. She’s an absolute wreck,” my aunt began, her voice dripping with a syrupy blend of concern and judgment. “She told me everything. How could you just take all the family savings and run off with those rough friends of yours? Your parents are beside themselves with worry. They don’t have a dollar to their name because of you.”
There it was.
The smear campaign.
I was no longer just an ungrateful daughter. I was a thief who had abandoned her destitute parents to hang out with a gang of alcoholic veterans. The narrative was perfect, designed to isolate me, to turn the one family member who’d ever shown me kindness against me.
They were turning me into the villain of my own story.
I kept my voice calm, betraying none of the cold anger solidifying in my gut.
“Aunt Mary,” I said simply, “there’s more to the story than what you heard. I promise I’ll talk to you later.”
“Well, you’d better have a good explanation,” she huffed, her sympathy evaporating now that I wasn’t immediately capitulating. “Family is family, Lauren.”
I ended the call before she could continue.
There was no point in explaining. Any defense I offered would be twisted and used as more ammunition against me. In psychological warfare, sometimes the only winning move is not to play.
The final attack of the day came after sundown.
My phone rang one last time.
No caller ID.
I hesitated for a moment, then answered, putting it on speaker for Jax to hear.
It was Silas.
But the shouting was gone. His voice was low, gravelly, and laced with a menace that was far more terrifying than his rage.
“I don’t know where you’re hiding,” he began, his voice a low growl. “But you can’t hide forever. You think you can just cut us off after everything we gave you?”
He paused, and I could hear him breathing heavily.
“You owe me. You owe this house. You just wait. I’m going to find you, and I’m coming to get what’s mine.”
The line went dead.
The threat hung in the air between me and Jax, heavy and cold as a block of ice.
This was a different kind of war now. He had just escalated it from a battle of finances and emotions to a direct threat against my physical safety.
I looked at Jax.
He met my gaze, his expression unreadable but solid. He picked up a bar towel and calmly wiped down a clean spot on the counter.
“It’s all right, Sergeant,” he said, his voice a steady rumble. “This rally point is always ready for uninvited guests.”
