Stolen Power

“I don’t know.”
“Does she get along with Millie?”
“Well, no. I think she finds her an inconvenience. To be fair, Millie doesn’t get along with her either.” He shook his head thoughtfully. “Millie is a lot like her mother—feisty and with an angry streak. That didn’t sit well with Ruby. I’ve been seeing Ruby for around six months, and the first couple of months I tried to bring Ruby and Millie together, but it didn’t work. For whatever reason, they never ended up getting along.”
I ignored the obvious that Chase himself was the problem and reason for this.
“Do you think Ruby is capable of hurting Millie?”
“I wouldn’t have thought so, but I suppose the truth is I don’t know. She isn’t the deepest soul I’ve ever met, or the most intelligent.” He shook his head again and looked away. “Over the past month, she wouldn’t even come to the apartment when Millie was here. She wanted me to give full custody of Millie to Tanya. Asked me to do it several times, in fact.”
“When did she first ask you to do that?”
“Last month.” A realization sunk into his head, and he stood, pacing back and forth. “She couldn’t, could she?” He pondered the thought for a moment, like he was pitching the scenario, weighing it in his head. “No, I don’t think she could, but she could’ve hired someone.” His hand tightened into a fist. “She didn’t want Millie around. She wanted to move to LA, and for me to fund her little Instagram life.”
“She doesn’t have her own money?”
“Not a cent to her name. Her father is a mechanic and her mother is a nurse. A real low-class life and background.” He raised his finger in the air. That annoyed me as well. “Maybe, that’s why she wants the money. Yeah, that’s why she wants the million dollars. To fund her move to LA. She wants me to pay her the money and then take off to LA without me.”
“That’s a possibility.”
“She wants to continue to live the lavish life without me. I should’ve seen it. I should’ve seen that she was going to use me. It was always going to happen. Well, she’s messed with the wrong person this time. She will curse the day she ever crossed me, ever crossed Chase Martin.”
He said the last bit with an arrogant emphasis, like he was underlining his own name and really wanted to add ‘the great’ in front of it too. He certainly had a high opinion of himself and his own stock value but all I saw in front of me was a loser of the highest order, despite how many zeros there were after the balance of his bank account. The measure of a man was not, and never would be, how much money he had.
His face was registering anger now, which had its uses, but for now I wanted him to be rational so I decided to try to calm things down.
“We don’t know it’s her yet. She’s a suspect at the moment, that’s all. Is there anywhere she would’ve kept Millie, while she goes about her daily business?”
“‘Business?’ Hah!” he scoffed. “Posting those stupid photos all day isn’t a business!” He continued to pace the floor. “But no, not really. She still lives with her Mom and Dad, near their mechanic shop. Dirty place. Her mother and father wouldn’t stand for it. They hate me, but they seemed to be good people.”
The intercom buzzed.
We stared at each other.
Chase looked at his phone, opening an app that gave him streaming footage of the front door. “It’s Damon. Millie’s Grandfather.” He looked worried. “What am I going to tell him?”
I shrugged. “Can you just ignore it, pretend you’re not home?”
“Oh.” He leaned his head back in realization. “He was supposed to pick up Millie today for a few hours. I forgot.”
The intercom buzzed again.
“Tell him that Millie is at a play date with a friend and you’ve forgotten to tell him.”
“That’s it.” Chase clicked his fingers and pointed his index finger at me triumphantly. “Of course. Good thinking, Jack.”
He buzzed Damon into the building, and within a few minutes, he was at the apartment door.
“Damon.” Chase greeted him with a solid handshake. “Come on in. So sorry but I forgot you were coming today. Millie is at a playdate at a friend’s place. I should have let you know but it completely slipped my mind, what with the deluge of work I have going on at the moment: lots of new clients, lots of new opportunities, you know the sort of thing.”
Damon raised his eyebrows slightly. He was clearly ex-army. A spotless polo shirt tucked into his ironed jeans, white sneakers that were cleaned recently, perhaps even daily.
He was immediately suspicious of my presence.
“This is Jack. A friend of mine.” Chase introduced us.
We shook hands. His grip was strong.
“Pleased to meet you, Damon.”
“Friend?” He raised his eyebrows again. “You’re not the usual type of friend that Chase has. Usually, his friends are blonde, twenty-years old, and have had a lot of cosmetic surgery.”
“That’s me,” I said with a wry smile. “Except the blonde bit, obviously.”
He laughed. The tension was broken.
“Army?” I asked.
“For a while. Ten years. Then I left and became a mechanic. Not a lavish life like this.” He opened his hands wide to indicate his disdain for Chase’s opulent life. “You risk your life for your country and you never get paid like this. But you wouldn’t understand that, would you, Chase? What was it that you said to me once? That it’s not about working harder, it’s about working smarter. I guess the rest of us just aren’t as smart as you, hey Chase?”
“Life isn’t fair,” Chase added. “And it’s very unbecoming of you to blame me for my