Chapter 6 - Tyler’s Camera Had Been Meant to Humiliate Her
Tyler eventually asked for his phone back.
Not because he wanted to delete the video.
Because he wanted to watch it.
The response officer refused until the device had been processed appropriately.
So Tyler watched a copy later with Mitchell’s permission.
He made it eighteen seconds before stopping.
“What?”
Emma asked.
Tyler shook his head.
“I look happy.”
Nobody answered.
He restarted.
There he was behind Michael.
Smartphone raised.
Smirking when Michael pointed the weapon.
Why?
Because Tyler thought he was about to capture proof of the family joke.
General Mitchell exposed.
The fake secure phone.
The fake rank.
The impossible older sister finally embarrassed on camera.
He had imagined sending it to cousins.
Maybe friends.
Maybe keeping it private and replaying it whenever Mitchell acted superior.
The thought disgusted him now.
“I wanted you to be fake.”
Mitchell sat across the room with her injured wrist wrapped.
“That’s unusually honest.”
Tyler stared at the screen.
“Why?”
“You tell me.”
He struggled.
Because if she was real, what did that make everything Michael had told him?
Because if she had actually become a general, then Tyler had spent years mocking someone whose life he never bothered to learn.
Because Michael was his father.
And children—even grown children—often prefer the world where their parent is accurate.
But there was something else.
Tyler had always felt smaller when Mitchell came home.
She did not make him feel that way intentionally.
She barely spoke about work.
That silence itself became intimidating.
Tyler was twenty-eight and still drifting between jobs.
Michael had helped him enter police administration twice.
Tyler quit both times.
He filmed local events for money.
Lived partly at home.
Every time Mitchell’s name appeared, Michael said:
“Don’t compare yourself to her. Half of it’s theater anyway.”
That comfort had been useful.
If Mitchell’s achievements were exaggerated, Tyler did not have to ask what he wanted from his own life.
He could mock hers instead.
The camera had given him distance.
He watched other people.
Commented.
Judged.
Rarely risked being the person in frame.
Mitchell saw something in his face.
“You are not required to become impressive because I have a rank.”
Tyler looked up.
“That isn’t what this is about.”
“It’s part of it.”
He knew she was right.
Then Mitchell asked:
“Why did Dad tell you to record?”
Tyler replayed the morning conversation.
Michael had said:
“If she pulls anything, I want proof.”
Proof for whom?
Tyler had not asked.
Michael was police chief.
Recording felt procedural.
Official.
Now the timing seemed darker.
Michael expected confrontation.
He entered armed.
He brought handcuffs into a family kitchen because they were already on his belt, yes.
But he also wanted a camera.
That meant he did not merely intend to challenge Mitchell privately.
He wanted a record of himself exposing her.
Tyler looked toward his father.
“You wanted me to catch her lying.”
Michael’s voice remained flat.
“I wanted documentation.”
“Of what?”
“If she was impersonating a federal officer—”
“She wasn’t.”
“I know that now.”
Mitchell finally interrupted.
“No.”
Michael looked at her.
“You knew enough before.”
His face tightened.
She continued.
“You had seen the phone. You knew I served. You knew I had held command positions. You might not have believed the rank.”
A pause.
“But pointing a weapon at me was not fact-finding.”
Michael had no answer.
Tyler looked at the frozen frame on the phone.
His father’s weapon extended.
Mitchell calm.
Emma terrified.
Himself smiling behind the lens.
Then he deleted nothing.
“I’m keeping it.”
Emma looked alarmed.
“Why?”
“Because if I erase the part where I look terrible, I’ll tell myself later I wasn’t that bad.”
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Mitchell studied him.
For the first time that day, she saw something in Tyler that did not resemble Michael at all.
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