BLOODlines

13: Mrs. Adams Strikes Harder

The day after Evelyn caught that flicker of defiance in her daughter’s eyes, her calm mask shattered in private.

Inside her study, she paced like a caged predator, her mind racing. Frank was proving harder to break than she imagined. Even worse, Cherish was no longer bending under her influence.

“No more whispers. No more subtle warnings,” she muttered to herself. “If I want this boy gone, I must cut him out at the root.”

Her phone buzzed on the desk. It was her personal assistant. Evelyn snatched it up, her voice crisp.

“Is it done?”

“Yes, ma’am,” the assistant replied. “The landlord received the money this morning. Frank and his mother will be given eviction papers within the week.”

A sharp, cruel smile curved Evelyn’s lips. “Good. Without a roof over their heads, let’s see how long he clings to pride.”

But it wasn’t enough. She wanted him not just displaced—but broken.

Meanwhile, Frank had returned from a grueling day of searching for odd jobs. Work was scarce now that whispers followed him wherever he went. Employers were cautious, and gossip had already closed more doors than he could count.

When he reached the small, crumbling apartment he shared with his mother, Miriam, he found her sitting on the floor with an opened envelope in her lap. Her face was pale.

“Frank…” she whispered, handing him the paper. “We’re being evicted.”

Frank’s eyes scanned the notice. His blood ran cold. One week. That was all the time they had before they were cast into the street.

He clenched his fists. “This isn’t a coincidence.”

Miriam shook her head, fear in her eyes. “Who would do such a thing to us?”

Frank didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. The name hung heavy in the air. Evelyn Adams.

At the hospital, Cherish sat by her window, restless. Something gnawed at her, a silent warning in her chest. She needed to see Frank, to know he was all right.

That evening, she begged the nurse for another chance at a phone call. Reluctantly, the nurse handed it over.

Frank answered on the second ring. His voice was hoarse.

“Cherish?”

“It’s me,” she said softly. “Frank, are you okay? You sound—different.”

There was a pause, then he exhaled heavily. “They’re throwing us out. My mother and I. One week, and we’ll be on the street.”

Cherish’s heart lurched. “What? No, that’s impossible. Where will you go?”

“I don’t know,” he said flatly. “But I can guess who’s behind it. Your mother has made her move.”

Cherish’s eyes burned with tears. She pressed her forehead to the cold glass, whispering, “She won’t win. I won’t let her.”

“Don’t fight her for me,” Frank warned. “It’ll only hurt you.”

“I can’t stand by and watch her destroy you,” she whispered back.

For a moment, silence stretched between them. Then Frank’s voice broke through, steady but tinged with desperation.

“Then promise me something, Cherish. Whatever happens—don’t let her change who you are. Don’t let her cage your heart.”

She wanted to promise. But her voice faltered, caught between love and fear.

The next day, Evelyn escalated further. She hired two men—well-dressed, polite, but ruthless—to shadow Frank. To “remind” him that staying close to Cherish would only bring pain.

The warnings started small: whispers in the alley, footsteps behind him late at night. But then they grew bolder. A slashed tire on his motorcycle. A threatening note slipped under their door: Leave her, or suffer.

Frank bore it quietly, but Miriam noticed the tension in his shoulders, the sleepless nights. One evening, she confronted him.

“Frank, tell me the truth. What have you gotten yourself into?”

He couldn’t meet her eyes. “Nothing, Mama. It’s just… bad luck.”

But Miriam wasn’t a fool. She had lived long enough to know when misfortune was manufactured.

“Is this about that girl?” she asked softly.

Frank froze. His silence was her answer.

Miriam’s voice trembled. “Then you must let her go. We cannot fight people like her mother. She will crush us, Frank.”

Frank looked at her with anguish. “Mama, I can’t. She’s not just a girl to me. She’s… she’s everything.”

Back at the Adams estate, Evelyn sat in her room with a glass of wine, satisfied. In her mind, the pieces were falling neatly into place.

But what she didn’t know was that Cherish had overheard a fragment of her phone call earlier. She had heard her mother say Frank’s name with venom, had heard the words “he’ll regret crossing me.”

That night, Cherish wept into her pillow, torn between the mother who raised her and the boy who , at the next bend, his hand squeezed the brake—and nothing happened.

The bike wobbled violently. His eyes widened in horror.

Someone had cut his brakes.