My Father Fired Me After I Defended a 30-Year Employee and Handed My Sister the Store Keys Months Later, He Walked Into My New Hardware Store and Found His Entire Team Working There

and inspected the drive belt. It had slipped off the primary tension pulley—a ten-minute fix, nothing more.

“Leave the mower here,” I said. “I’ll replace the tension spring and have it back at Otis’s farm by tomorrow afternoon. I’ll charge him eight dollars for the spring.”

Dad looked at me, his eyes rimmed with red. “And Rex’s?”

“Rex’s is Aubrey’s store,” I told him. “You gave it to her. If she wants to save it, she has to swallow her pride, call the contractors, cancel the software contracts she doesn’t understand, and learn how to run a business from the ground up instead of from a textbook. But you and I are done working together.”

Sully came walking through the partition door, a clipboard in hand, nodding politely to my father. “Morning, Rex,” Sully said easily. “Hot one today.”

Dad didn’t reply. He stood there for another long moment, looking