My mom didn’t yell. She just shoved my desk across the room like my career was cheap furniture she could rearrange. My brother stood there smiling, measuring the wall for his studio while my monitors flickered.
I said “okay” because protesting would only make me the villain. So, I packed and left. By sunrise, my phone was vibrating off the table.
The second I disappeared, their whole world started collapsing. The Architect of Disaster
My name is Kayla Mitchell. I am 33 years old, and silence is the most expensive commodity I own.
I work for a company called Northpine Risk Solutions. You have likely never heard of them, and if I am doing my job correctly, you never will. I deal in corporate disaster scenarios.
I analyze data patterns that predict market crashes, supply chain failures, and internal embezzlement schemes. My work requires a dedicated server connection, two encrypted hard drives, and absolutely unbroken concentration. A single decimal point misplaced in my line of work does not just mean a bad grade; it means millions of dollars in liability.
For the last eight months, since I moved back into my childhood home to save for a down payment in this impossible housing market, I have operated out of the upstairs spare room. It was not much—just a 10×10 box with beige carpet that smelled faintly of old cedar—but I had transformed it. I bought the desk, a heavy, standing-capable oak slab that cost me $800.
I bought the dual 27-inch 4K monitors so I could run spreadsheets alongside live data feeds. I bought the acoustic foam panels lining the north wall to dampen the sound of the neighborhood traffic. I paid for the upgraded fiber optic internet package that ran into the house, a bill that was roughly $120 a month.
I paid for the router. I paid for the electricity that powered it all. That room was not just a room.
It was my cockpit. It was the engine that generated the money that paid for the groceries in the fridge downstairs and the gas in my mother’s car. And on Tuesday night at 7:15 in the evening, my mother decided to evict me from it.
The Eviction
She did not knock. Deborah does not believe in knocking because she believes privacy is a barrier to family intimacy. She walked in while I was in the middle of a deep-dive analysis on a logistics firm in Chicago.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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