The silence after her father left was a tangible thing, heavy with the scent of expensive whiskey and unspoken dread. Megan listened to his retreating footsteps on the stairs, each one a little slower, a little heavier than usual. The great Michael De Santa, nursing his wounds—both visible and invisible—with a breakfast of bourbon.
She was still leaning against the counter, the cool glass of orange juice in her hand, when the soft swish of the service door announced Ava's arrival. The housekeeper moved with a quiet, efficient grace, a cleaning rag already in her hand, her eyes taking in the empty whiskey glass with a practiced neutrality that spoke volumes. Ava saw everything, heard everything, and said nothing. She was the bedrock upon which this crumbling mansion precariously stood.
"Ava," Megan said, her voice cutting through the quiet. "Scrambled eggs. With bacon. Crispy, not that floppy shit."
Ava nodded, a faint, tired smile touching her lips. "Of course, Ms. De Santa." Her thick, melodic accent wrapped around the formal title, a sound as familiar and comforting as the hum of the Sub-Zero fridge. She set to work immediately, pulling pans from the cupboard with a quiet clatter, her movements economical and sure. Megan watched her for a moment, a pang of something almost like guilt flickering and dying. Ava worked harder before 9 AM than Megan did all month. But that was the order of things. It was just how it was.
The kitchen's fragile peace was shattered by the stomping entrance of Tracey. Megan's twin was a portrait of curated chaos gone horribly wrong. Her normally pristine blonde hair was a bird's nest of extensions and yesterday's hairspray, her makeup smudged into raccoon rings around bloodshot eyes. She squinted against the morning light as if it were a personal assault.
"'Morning, sunshine," Megan drawled, taking a slow sip of juice.
"Ugh, shut up," Tracey groaned, clutching her head and fumbling for the coffee pot. "My skull is vibrating. I can hear my own eyeballs moving."
Megan just smirked. The symphony of a Tracey hangover was a familiar, and often amusing, background track.
The cacophony tripled with the arrival of Jimmy. He slouched in, a human embodiment of greasy stagnation, wearing the same clothes he probably had on for two days. He went straight to the fridge, bypassing any notion of actual food, and emerged with a can of Sprunk. The pssht-fizz of him opening it at this hour was a minor obscenity.
He took a long gulp, belched softly, and his eyes, dull and opportunistic, landed on Megan. "Hey. Can I borrow your car?"
Megan didn't even look at him. "Hell no."
"Come on, Meg," he whined, the entitled brat peeking through the wannabe-gangster veneer. "Just for, like, an hour. Gotta see a guy about a thing."
She finally turned her head, her gaze flat and dismissive. "The only 'thing' you've got to see is the inside of your shithole room. Why don't you go back in there and finish jerking your dick to whatever weird anime crap you were watching? Save us all the hassle."
Jimmy's face flushed a mottled red. "Fuck you, you stuck-up bitch!"
"Fuck you, you useless man-child," she fired back, her voice cold and sharp. "Go play gangster with your online friends. Oh wait, you can't, because you'd piss yourself if you saw a real gun."
From by the coffee maker, a weak, snorting laugh escaped Tracey. It was a dry, cracked sound.
Megan's head snapped toward her twin. "Don't you laugh, you wanna-be porn star," she sneered, the familial venom flowing freely now, a toxic comfort. "Why don't you go hang out with your STD-carrying, porn-making 'friends' and see if they can teach you how to actually act? Or at least how to not look like a corpse in the morning."
Tracey's hungover smirk vanished, replaced by a look of wounded outrage. "You're a total cunt, you know that?"
"Takes one to know one, sweetheart," Megan parroted their father's earlier endearment with vicious irony.
With that, she set her empty juice glass on the counter with a definitive click. She ignored Jimmy's continued sputtered curses and Tracey's glowering stare. She gave a slight, appreciative nod to Ava, who was silently tending to the sizzling bacon, wisely pretending to be deaf. Then, with a contemptuous flick of her brunette hair over her tattooed shoulder, Megan turned and walked out of the kitchen. Her bare feet made no sound on the polished floors as she retreated back upstairs.
***
The afternoon sun was a lazy gold, pooling on the floor of Megan's room as she scrolled through lifeinvader feeds, a dull parade of other people's curated excitement. Then, a shriek tore through the house's oppressive quiet—a raw, outraged sound that was unmistakably Tracey.
Megan's head snapped up. Drama. For a second, it was just the familiar background noise of home. She sighed, tossed her phone aside, and padded out into the hallway. She met Tracey on the stairs, her twin storming upward, face blotchy with tears and fury, muttering something about "humiliation" and "that bitch."
"What's his problem now?" Megan asked, but Tracey just shoved past her without a word, the door to her room slamming with a force that shook the wall.
Typical. Megan rolled her eyes and continued down, her curiosity now piqued. She paused at the grand, arching entrance to the living room, not entering, just leaning against the frame, a spectator in her own home.
Her father was on the massive sectional, but he looked… absurd. He was wearing sleek, dark tech-wear, the kind of outfit a twenty-five-year-old billionaire would wear to a product launch. Megan's eyebrows nearly hit her hairline. Wow. Midlife crisis hitting this hard? She almost snorted, but something held the sound in her throat.
It was his posture. He wasn't lounging. He was rigid, a coiled spring dressed in Silicon Valley cosplay. His eyes were fixed on the gigantic screen with an intensity that had nothing to do with interest.
Jay Norris's smug, amplified voice filled the room. Megan knew the guy by reputation—the ultimate tech bro guru, the king of lifeinvader. She listened with half an ear to the spiel about data mining and child labor, the crowd's mindless chanting of "Dock!" It was all so grotesque and boring. Her gaze stayed on her father. He wasn't watching a presentation; he was watching a target.
Then, he moved. A slow, deliberate reach for his own phone. His thumb moved over the screen. He brought it to his ear, his lips forming two silent, vicious words she could read perfectly from across the room.
"And… fuck you."
On screen, Jay Norris's phone rang. The coincidence was a physical jolt, a cold wire tightening around Megan's ribs. Her breath caught. This wasn't a coincidence. This was a plot point.
Norris answered. "Hello?"
The explosion was small on the TV, a sharp pop and a flash of light, but the effect was monstrous. The tech guru crumpled. The crowd's cheers morphed into screams. The screen filled with chaos, then died into a flat, blue "Signal Lost" void.
The silence in the De Santa living room was absolute, save for the low hum of electronics.
"Oh! Ach! Oh, Jesus! Whoa, Lest… whoa!"
Her father's reaction wasn't triumph. It was shock. A genuine, gut-punched horror. He stared at the dead screen as if he could see the ghost of the man he'd just… had killed? Orchestrated the killing of? The pieces, the jagged, terrifying pieces she'd been collecting since last night—Madrazo's bat, the whispered phone calls, the tension, this ridiculous outfit—suddenly snapped together with a clarity that was almost blinding.
He shot to his feet, the movement jerky. Megan melted back from the doorway, pressing herself flat against the hallway wall, her heart hammering a frantic tattoo against her ribs. She heard his footsteps, quick and heavy, heading for the kitchen.
Follow. You have to know.
She was a ghost, her bare feet silent on the tile. She hovered just around the corner, as his voice, low and strained, cut through the quiet.
"Lest, that was heavy! You watching the news?"
A pause.
"Alright. Hey, about that other thing, you know, the score?" His voice dropped further, becoming something greedy and desperate, the fear momentarily pushed aside by a baser hunger. "I'm trying to stay off the day trading, but maybe I'll take a look."
The call ended. Megan didn't wait. She turned and fled, a silent streak up the stairs, her mind reeling. The image was burned into her brain: the tech-bro costume, the dialed number, the exploding head, the shocked horror on her father's face that quickly curdled into criminal calculation.
He wasn't just in trouble. He was the trouble. He was a conspirator, an assassin-by-proxy. The safe, gilded, boring world of Vinewood was a painted set, and he'd just pulled back the curtain to reveal the grinding, bloody machinery backstage.
She slipped into her room, closing the door with a soft, precise click. She leaned back against it, the cool wood solid against her spine. No screaming. No confronting. Nothing.