Franklin stood frozen, surrounded by his silent extended family, his two sons looking small and utterly helpless beside him. He looked down at the black paper on the table, then up at Maris, his mouth opening and closing as if searching for a power he no longer possessed.
“You took everything,” he whispered.
“No,” Maris said, taking a step backward toward the exit. “You never gave me a seat at your table. So I built my own. Happy Father’s Day, Franklin.”
She turned her back on them all.
As she walked down the sunlit pavement, the roar of the Jaguar engine echoed through the quiet suburban street—not as a display of wealth or vengeance, but as the sound of absolute, unshakeable freedom.
Epilogue:
Six months later, the high-rise office on the forty-second floor of Seattle’s tech corridor smelled of fresh rain and roasted espresso.
Maris stood by the floor-to-ceiling glass, watching the ferries trace pale lines across the gray surface of Puget Sound. Her desk was immaculate—a stark contrast to the cluttered, secondhand kitchen table where Helix Frame had been born.
