Chapter 3 - The Broken Glass and Flying teeth
CRACK.
The sound echoed through the high-vaulted ceiling like a pistol shot. Ryan’s jaw snapped to the left with violent, unnatural speed. Blood, saliva, and two shattered fragments of white molar exploded into the bright afternoon sunlight, spraying across the pristine white slipcover of the nearby sofa and spilling his scotch across the polished floorboards.
Ryan’s eyes rolled back into his head as his knees instantly liquefied. His momentum threw him backward six feet through the air before he crashed helplessly onto the reclaimed teak coffee table.
The heavy table groaned under the sudden impact, flipping sideways. Crystal tumblers shattered against the stone hearth, finger sandwiches flew across the Persian rug, and dark roast coffee spilled over a stack of leather folders resting near the center of the wood.
Ryan hit the floor with a wet, gasping thud, rolling onto his side near the shattered glass, clutching his broken, bleeding face as a choked, gurgling moan escaped his throat.
"AHHHHHHH! MY JAW! MY FACE!" Ryan shrieked, blood leaking past his fingers onto his navy polo shirt.
A wave of absolute horror swept through the living room. Jessica let out an ear-piercing scream, her champagne glass slipping from her fingers and smashing against the floorboards. VIP guests scrambled backward in blind panic, dragging their screaming children toward the far corners of the glass windows, staring in wide-eyed terror at the uniformed woman standing over the bleeding host.
Emily didn't jump. She didn't shake. She stood tall in her camouflage fatigue uniform, her boots planted firmly on either side of the rug, looking down at Ryan’s writhing body with icy, unyielding detachment. She reached up with a calm, deliberate motion, adjusting the flag patch on her right shoulder before addressing the man bleeding at her feet.
"You picked the wrong Colonel’s house to steal," Emily said, her voice dropping into a low, lethal register that echoed off the glass walls.
In the back corner of the room, a elder investor in a tailored gray suit was trembling so violently that he lost his grip on a heavy brown leather document folder he had been holding.
The folder slipped from his fingers, falling straight down onto the coffee table that had flipped onto its side.
The impact popped the brass brass clasp open.
A thick, multi-page legal document, stamped with blue archival seals, slid out across the wood, coming to rest right beside the pool of spilled coffee and broken glass.
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Printed across the top header in bold, black legal typography were the words: LAKE SUNAPEE REAL ESTATE PURCHASE AND TRANSFER AGREEMENT.
And at the very bottom of the front summary page, executed in sweeping blue ink, was Emily Carter’s full legal signature.
