Chapter 7 - The Emergency Family CouncilBy 8:00 P.M. that evening, the living room of Martin Collins’ grand house in Mason felt less like a luxury residence and more like the triage tent of a defeated army.
The broken Tuscan oak front door was still covered by a crude sheet of plywood, letting in a cold draft that made the silk curtains flutter.
Sitting on the couches, chairs, and dining stools were twenty-two members of the extended Collins clan.
Uncle Richard sat in an armchair, staring blankly at three declined credit card receipts from his local golf club. Cousin Mark was pacing furiously, clutching an unpaid invoice for his daughter’s private school tuition that had bounced three hours ago. Steven and Todd sat at the dining table, drinking cheap beer from a cardboard case—the expensive Macallan was long gone.
In the center of the room, sitting in his leather armchair wearing a navy cardigan, was Martin Collins. He looked ten years older than he had on Christmas Eve. His hair was messy, his hands were trembling, and a half-empty glass of tap water sat on the table beside him.
Claire sat on the hearth of the fireplace, wrapped in a blanket, staring silently at the floor.
“We have to sue him!” Cousin Mark roared, slamming his fist against the wall. “It’s illegal! He can’t just fire forty-seven people in one morning! That’s wrongful termination! That’s fraud!”
“Shut up, Mark!” Steven snapped, rubbing his tired eyes. “We were at-will employees! We didn't even have signed contracts! He owned the company 100%! He doesn't owe us a damn thing!”
“What about the company cars?!” Todd yelled. “They towed my truck right out of my driveway! My kids’ car seats were still in the back!”
“He’s a monster!” Linda screamed from the kitchen archway, her gold bracelets clinking as she shook her hands in the air. “To do this to us on Christmas week! After everything we did for him! We welcomed that blue-collar trash into our home! We let him sit at our table!”
“We let him sit at our table?”
The voice was quiet, but it cut through the room like a razor blade.
Everyone turned to look at Claire.
She slowly pushed the blanket off her shoulders and stood up, looking around the room at her brothers, her uncles, her cousins, and finally at her father.
“We didn't welcome him into our home,” Claire said, her voice shaking with a bitter, hollow rage. “We bled him dry. Every single one of you.”
“Claire, don't speak to your mother like that!” Martin barked, trying to muster his old authoritative tone, though his voice cracked at the end.
“No, Dad! You listen to me!” Claire shouted, stepping into the middle of the room, tears streaming down her face. “For eight years, you called him a loser! You made him enter through the garage! You laughed at his boots! You made fun of his truck at every single Thanksgiving dinner!”
She turned on Steven. “You took a hundred and eighty thousand dollars a year from his company to sit in an office and play fantasy football! You drove a sixty-thousand-dollar truck paid for by his sweat!”
She turned on her father. “And you, Dad! You took two hundred and forty thousand dollars a year! You bought that Escalade with his money! You bought that boat in Florida with his money! And when his sixteen-year-old daughter stood in this room on Christmas Eve, you threw her out into the snow because she dared to say her father worked hard!”
Silence fell over the room. No one spoke. Even Cousin Mark lowered his head.
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“He didn't destroy us, Dad,” Claire sobbed, looking at her father with total devastation. “We destroyed ourselves. We kicked his daughter onto the porch, and he finally stopped paying for our lives.”
Before anyone could reply, the headlights of two police cruisers swept through the front windows, casting long, blue-and-red flashing beams across the plywood door.
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