Chapter 3 - The Eviction Notice
I sat comfortably in Arthur's office watching the local news on his massive flat-screen television.
The breaking news ticker at the bottom of the screen prominently displayed my brother's mugshot.
My phone began to ring incessantly, the caller ID flashing repeatedly with my mother's name.
I let it go to voicemail seven times before I finally decided to answer.
"Clara, you have to fix this right now!" my mother shrieked hysterically into the receiver.
"Liam is in federal custody, and the judge is denying him bail!"
"He stole my life savings, Mom," I replied with absolute calm.
"You owed us that money for rent, you ungrateful brat!" my father yelled aggressively in the background.
"Call the police and tell them it was all just a big family misunderstanding!"
"I cannot do that," I said smoothly.
"The account belonged to Aunt Evelyn's corporate trust, not just me."
There was a long, terrifying silence on the other end of the telephone line.
My parents knew Aunt Evelyn had been wealthy, but they never knew the true extent of her power.
"What did you do, Clara?" my mother whispered, her voice trembling with sudden, genuine fear.
"I survived," I answered simply, before hanging up the phone and blocking their numbers.
Arthur leaned back in his expensive leather chair and steepled his fingers together.
"The FBI has officially frozen all of Liam's bank accounts," Arthur announced.
"But we are certainly not stopping there, Clara."
Arthur opened the thick file on his desk and pulled out a yellowed property deed.
"When your parents bought their house twenty years ago, they took out a massive private loan."
"Aunt Evelyn secretly bought that debt through a shell company to protect you from them."
My jaw dropped as I realized the absolute magnitude of my aunt's brilliant foresight.
"Since they aided and abetted Liam in the theft, they explicitly violated the morality clause of that mortgage," Arthur explained.
"Are you saying we can legally take their house?" I asked, my heart pounding in my chest.
Arthur slid a crisp legal document across the mahogany desk toward me.
"I am saying we already own it."
"I just dispatched the county sheriff to serve them with a twenty-four-hour eviction notice."
I signed the foreclosure authorization without a single ounce of hesitation or regret.
Meanwhile, back at the house, my parents were frantically trying to call a bail bondsman.
A loud, aggressive knock echoed heavily through their front hallway.
May you like
My father ripped the door open, expecting to see an expensive lawyer ready to help them.
Instead, he came face to face with three armed sheriff's deputies holding a stack of empty moving boxes.
