Part 2: The One Call That Exposed My Entire Family
I pressed the phone against my ear and watched Mason lower the tire iron.
For a moment, nobody spoke.
The windshield of my SUV looked like a frozen lake that had cracked beneath someone’s feet. Glass glittered across the pavement. The driver’s side window was gone, both headlights were shattered, and the front bumper had been pushed backward so badly that the hood no longer sat straight.
My $78,000 SUV, the vehicle I had worked years to afford, looked as though it had survived a collision with a concrete wall.
And Mason was still smiling.
“Who are you calling?” my mother demanded.
I turned away from her.
“Hello,” I said when the dispatcher answered. “I need police assistance. My brother has deliberately destroyed my vehicle. He’s still here, and several neighbors witnessed what happened.”
Mom’s face changed immediately.
Not because she was worried about the damage.
Because I had refused to protect Mason.
“Hang up!” she shouted, rushing toward me. “Ethan, hang up this instant!”
I stepped away.
“No.”
She stared at me as if I had slapped her.
“You are seriously going to call the police on your own brother?”
I looked at the broken SUV.
“He just destroyed my property in front of half the neighborhood.”
“It was an accident!” Vanessa interrupted.
That was interesting.
Mason hadn’t even claimed it was an accident yet.
I glanced at her. She was still holding her phone, though she had lowered it to her side. The confident smile she had worn when the first window shattered had disappeared.
“An accident?” I repeated.