Chapter 7: Not My Problem

Chapter 7: Not My Problem

The messages didn’t stop. They came in waves, a digital siege of impotent fury. After Liam blocked him on Instagram, Derek tried email, then LinkedIn. Each message was more unhinged than the last, a frantic spiral of accusations, threats, and pathetic pleas. He called Liam a thief, a snake, a backstabber. He claimed the collection was his inheritance, his future, the only thing of value his family had left.

Liam read them all, not with fear, but with a kind of clinical detachment. He forwarded the most threatening ones to Sarah with a simple caption: The dragon is angry.

Her reply was instant. Don't engage. Block and delete. He’s just a sad little man throwing a tantrum.

She was right, of course. That was the smart play. The safe play. But Liam knew this wouldn’t end with a block button. Derek’s obsession, the same pathology that had led him to fill a notebook with petty grievances and calculated punishments, would not be deterred by a digital wall. He would keep digging. He would show up at Liam's work, or his apartment. The ghost of Maple Street would haunt him until it was properly exorcised.

His father’s voice echoed in his memory, a ghost of a different sort. A battle not worth fighting. But this was different. This wasn’t about forty dollars anymore. It was about ending the story on his own terms.

So, Liam did the one thing Derek didn’t expect. He replied.

He chose the most coherent of Derek’s rambling emails and wrote back a single, simple line: Let’s meet. The Grind Coffee House, 5th and Main. Tomorrow at 3 PM. Come alone.

He hit send before he could second-guess himself. He chose the coffee shop where he and Sarah had celebrated his victory. It was his turf now. Public. Brightly lit. Safe. He was setting the terms of engagement, dictating the battlefield. This was his battle now, and he was ready to fight it.

The next day, Liam arrived at 2:45 PM. He ordered a black coffee, chose a small table in the center of the room, and sat down to wait. He was dressed in the clothes of his new life—a sharp, dark-collared shirt and clean-cut jeans. He was calm. He sipped his coffee, the bitter taste grounding him. He had spent ten years feeling powerless. Now, he felt nothing but a cold, steady certainty.

Derek stumbled in at 3:10 PM, ten minutes late and looking like he’d been dragged backward through a hedge. His expensive polo shirt was rumpled, his hair was a mess, and his eyes were bloodshot and wild. He was a caricature of his former self, the smug smirk replaced by a desperate, twitching sneer. He scanned the room, his eyes landing on Liam with a jolt.

He strode to the table and threw himself into the opposite chair, the force of it making the small table rattle. "You've got a lot of nerve, Carter," he hissed, his voice a low, ragged rasp. Heads turned nearby.

Liam didn’t flinch. He took another slow sip of his coffee. "Hello, Derek. You're late."

"Don't play games with me!" Derek slammed a hand on the table. "Where is it? My collection. Did you sell it? I want it back. All of it. Or you give me the money. Every last cent."

Liam set his cup down with a soft click. He looked Derek directly in the eye, his own gaze placid. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

The lie, so simple and bald-faced, seemed to short-circuit Derek’s brain. "What? Don't you dare lie to me! My mother described you! The beard, the glasses… the cheap car you stuffed my entire life into!"

"Your mother held a garage sale," Liam stated, his voice maddeningly reasonable. "She was selling a large lot of old toys. She named a price. I paid it. It was a simple, fair transaction between two adults."

"Fair?" Derek choked out the word, a strangled laugh escaping his lips. "That collection was worth a fortune! My father collected that for me! It was my inheritance! You stole it for four hundred dollars!"

"Four hundred dollars was the price she asked for," Liam repeated calmly. "I simply agreed to her terms. It's basic commerce, Derek. Surely you understand that."

The calm, rational tone seemed to enrage Derek more than any insult could have. "This isn't about commerce! It's about what you did! You took advantage of my mother! You stole from me!" His voice was rising, cracking with desperation. "You owe me!"

Liam leaned forward slightly, his expression hardening for the first time. "Owe you? That's funny. I seem to recall a time when the concept of owing someone money was a little… flexible for you. Let’s see, it was ten years ago. It involved a prank with a phone. Forty dollars, I believe."

Derek stared at him, his mouth agape. "Forty… you're bringing that up now? We were kids! That was nothing!"

"It was everything I had," Liam said, his voice dropping, each word landing like a chip of ice. "It was eight weeks of my allowance. And when I asked for it back, you laughed in my face."

"This is insane! You can't compare a stupid kid's prank to tens of thousands of dollars!"

"I'm not comparing them," Liam said. "I'm connecting them. You taught me a valuable lesson that day, Derek. A lesson about fairness. About how some people see the world. So when your mother offered me a deal, I took it. I considered the forty dollars, plus ten years of interest."

Derek just shook his head, a look of genuine disbelief on his face. He still didn't get it. He still saw himself as the victim. It was time for the final blow.

"But the most interesting thing," Liam continued, his voice now a near whisper, forcing Derek to lean in. "Wasn't the collection. It was what I found inside one of the boxes."

He saw a flicker of confusion in Derek's eyes.

"A little black notebook," Liam said. "With your initials on it. D.V."

The color drained from Derek's face. The anger was replaced by a sudden, stark fear.

"It was your ledger, wasn't it? A record of all your little grudges. All your petty little revenge schemes." Liam didn't need the notebook; he had memorized the most important page. "I saw the entry for Kevin M. And the payback you designed for him. 'The Meme Apocalypse.' Funny how you used my forty dollars as your weapon. I wasn't even the target, was I? I was just ammunition. Collateral damage in your sad little war against anyone who bruised your fragile ego."

Derek was speechless. He looked utterly broken, exposed. Liam hadn't just taken his money; he had unearthed the pathetic, secret architecture of his entire personality and laid it bare on a coffee shop table. The money was gone, but this was worse. This was the destruction of his self-image.

He slumped back in his chair, all the fight gone out of him. He looked small. Defeated. "What… what am I supposed to do?" he stammered, his voice thin and reedy. "That was everything. You've ruined me."

Liam stood up, his chair scraping softly against the floor. He looked down at the man who had tormented his younger self, the specter that had lingered in the back of his mind for a decade. He felt no anger. No pity. He felt nothing at all but the serene calm of a long-overdue closure.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out two twenty-dollar bills, smoothed them out, and placed them deliberately on the table next to Derek's trembling hand.

"Here's your forty dollars back," he said, his voice flat and final. "The rest of it?" He shrugged.

He looked into Derek's pleading, broken eyes and delivered the words he had waited ten years to say. The words that would sever the final thread connecting their lives.

"That sounds like a you problem, not a me problem."

Liam turned and walked away. He didn't look back. He pushed open the glass door of the coffee shop and stepped out into the bright afternoon sun. He took a deep breath of the city air. It smelled of exhaust, hot pavement, and freedom. The weight of the past decade, a burden he hadn’t even realized he was still carrying, lifted from his shoulders, dissolving into the noise of the bustling street. The battle was over. He had won. And he was finally, truly, free.