Chapter 3 - The Celebration Before the Storm
Three days passed.
During those seventy-two hours, I lived in a world of absolute serenity. I spent my mornings drinking organic dark roast on my hillside terrace, watching the red rocks of Camelback Mountain catch the morning sun. My afternoons were spent finalizing the launch of my secondary tech venture, working from a custom glass-topped desk that overlooked my private infinity pool.
I had turned off location sharing on my phone and filtered incoming calls from my father, Gwendolyn, and Chloe directly to voicemail.
My father had called six times. Gwendolyn had texted twice—not to apologize, but to demand I return my house keys and inform me that my remaining clothes had been packed into garbage bags and placed in the garage. Chloe had posted a fourteen-second video on social media showing off "her new luxury bedroom makeover," complete with neon signboards mounted onto my mother’s restored plaster walls.
I watched Chloe’s video while sitting by my pool on Friday afternoon.
In the clip, Chloe danced around my mother's former bedroom, showing off the sleek new vanity she had installed where my mother's hand-carved mahogany desk used to stand. Gwendolyn appeared briefly in the background, holding a glass of champagne and smiling broadly as she toasted her daughter's triumph.
"Out with the old, in with the ultimate aesthetic!" Chloe squealed to her thirty thousand followers. "Finally got rid of the negative energy in this house!"
I smiled softly to myself, closing the app. They were celebrating a victory that was built on quicksand.
What they didn't know was that Arthur Pendelton had completed the formal audit of the estate property taxes and filed the Certificate of Non-Compliance with the Maricopa County Superior Court on Thursday afternoon. The legal notice had been served via process server to the Phoenix residence at precisely two o'clock today.
Right on cue, my phone began ringing.
It wasn't a text message this time. It was a direct call from my father's cell phone. Ten seconds later, Gwendolyn’s number began calling on call waiting. Then Chloe.
The storm had arrived.
I picked up my father's call, placing the phone on speaker as I leaned back into my lounge chair.
"Paige?!" My father’s voice came through the speaker, hysterical, strained, and completely devoid of his usual calm demeanor. "Paige, answer me right now! What is this?! What did you do?!"
In the background, I could hear screaming. Gwendolyn was shrieking at the top of her lungs, her voice muffled as if she were pacing wildly through the hallway.
"Hello, Father," I said casually, my voice as calm as a still pond. "How are you doing today?"
"Don't 'hello Father' me!" Samuel shouted. "There is a process server standing in our driveway! He just handed me a formal eviction notice and a freeze order on the house title! Gwendolyn is having a panic attack! She says your mother's lawyer is claiming you own fifty-one percent of this house?!"
"That is incorrect," I corrected him smoothly. "I don't own fifty-one percent of the house anymore."
My father paused, his breathing heavy and ragged over the line. "What? What do you mean?"
"According to Clause 4B of Mother's trust, when I was unlawfully displaced from my primary residence, your lifetime tenancy was revoked," I explained, taking a slow sip of my iced tea. "As of eight o'clock this morning, I own one hundred percent of the property."
A sudden, sharp movement sounded over the phone line, followed by the rustle of the receiver being snatched away.
"You ungrateful little monster!" Gwendolyn’s voice screeched directly into the microphone. She was breathing so hard I could hear her chest heaving. "What kind of sick trick is this?! You can't evict us from our own home! Samuel owns this property! We have lived here for nine years! I have spent over one hundred thousand dollars remodeling this place!"
"Then I suggest you contact your attorney, Gwendolyn," I replied, my voice dropping into a razor-sharp tone. "Because if you check the county property records, you'll see that my mother's trust held the primary deed. Samuel only had permission to live there as long as I was treated as a primary heir. You violated those terms the second you gave me your twenty-four-hour ultimatum."
"This is illegal!" Gwendolyn screamed. "Samuel, tell her! Tell her she can't do this!"
In the background, I heard my father's trembling voice. "Gwendolyn... I... I didn't think Arthur would actually enforce the clause... I thought—"
"You knew about this?!" Gwendolyn's voice spiked into a terrifying register. "You knew she owned the house?! You lied to me for nine years?!"
"I didn't lie!" Samuel pleaded desperately. "I just... I thought Paige would never use it! I thought we were a family!"
"We were a family," I chimed in quietly over the speaker. "Until you sat at that dinner table on Tuesday night and told me to keep the peace while your wife threw me onto the street."
"Paige, please," my father begged, his voice cracking as the realization of his situation hit him. "Where are we supposed to go? Chloe is starting college in two months! We can't pack up this entire house in thirty days!"
"You don't have thirty days," I said coldly.
Silence fell over the line. Even Gwendolyn stopped screaming for a moment.
"What do you mean?" Gwendolyn asked, her tone suddenly laced with a thin edge of genuine fear.
"Thirty days is the standard legal timeline for a lawful tenant," I stated clearly. "However, since Chloe posted a public video two hours ago showing that she has actively destroyed historic property elements—specifically my mother's hand-plastered walls and custom mahogany trim—Arthur has filed an emergency injunction for immediate property endangerment."
I paused, letting the silence stretch across the miles between us.
May you like
"You have seventy-two hours to pack your personal belongings and surrender the keys to my legal representative," I told them. "If you are still on the property by Monday morning at nine o'clock, the Maricopa County Sheriff's Department will escort you off the premises."
Before either of them could speak another word, I disconnected the call.
