Chapter 4 - The Panicked Invasion
By Saturday morning, the reality of their situation had evidently turned into full-scale hysteria.
I was sitting in my hillside garden, reviewing architectural schematics for a planned renovation of my mother's house. I intended to convert the property into a non-profit arts shelter named in honor of my mother—a sanctuary for young women who needed a safe place to rebuild their lives.
My security system terminal on the wall chime chimed softly.
I tapped my tablet screen, bringing up the live video feed from my front security gate down at the bottom of the Paradise Valley hill.
Parked outside the heavy steel gate was my father's silver Lexus.
Stepping out of the vehicle was not just my father, but Gwendolyn and Chloe as well. They looked utterly disheveled. Gwendolyn was wearing oversized sunglasses, her hair tied in a messy bun, holding a massive leather binder filled with real estate documents. My father looked ten years older, his suit jacket wrinkled, his shoulders slumped in total defeat. Chloe was standing by the passenger door, staring up at my modern hillside mansion with her mouth hanging wide open in utter disbelief.
They had tracked down my address.
It wasn't particularly difficult for anyone with access to public property records under my corporate LLC name, but they had clearly driven straight over from Phoenix the second they realized their legal threats were useless.
My father walked up to the intercom box mounted on the concrete pillar and pressed the call button.
A soft chime sounded in my garden. I pressed the answer button on my tablet.
"Paige?" My father’s voice rang through the speaker, sounding breathless and humiliated. "Paige, we know you're in there. Please, open the gate."
I looked at the video screen. "You are trespassing on private property, Samuel."
I hadn't called him 'Father' since Tuesday night. The shift in word choice was subtle, but I saw him physically flinch through the camera lens.
"Paige, please," he stammered, looking up at the high-definition security camera. "We didn't come here to fight. We... we just needed to talk to you in person. We had no idea you lived here. How... how do you own a house in Paradise Valley?!"
Gwendolyn shoved her way in front of the camera lens, her face pale, her confidence entirely evaporated.
"Paige!" Gwendolyn cried out, her voice lacking any of its former sharp venom. She sounded panicked, desperate, and terrified. "Please, let us in! We spoke to our attorney last night! He... he looked at your mother's trust documents. He said... he said the trust is airtight. There's no way for us to fight it in court!"
"Your attorney is correct," I said calmly through the speaker. "Arthur Pendelton designed that trust specifically to survive any legal challenge."
"Paige, look at this house!" Chloe suddenly piped up, stepping into the camera frame, her eyes wide as she stared past the gate toward my limestone terraces and glass balconies. "You live in a fricking mansion! You have like six bedrooms here! Why didn't you tell us you had this place?! Why were you living in that tiny room in Phoenix if you owned this?!"
I couldn't help but laugh softly—a cold, quiet sound that echoed through the intercom speaker.
"Because that house in Phoenix was my mother's home, Chloe," I answered. "It was where I kept my memories of her. I stayed there because I thought my father cared about preserving those memories too. But you two treated it like your personal playground, and my father allowed you to turn me into an unwanted guest."
Gwendolyn pressed both hands against the metal gate bars. "Paige, we can fix this! Please! Chloe can move her stuff back into the basement! You can have the master bedroom back! We'll put everything back the way it was! Just drop the eviction notice! Samuel has nowhere to go! All our savings are tied up in the home renovations we did!"
"That was your mistake, Gwendolyn," I said without an ounce of pity. "You spent your savings remodeling a house you didn't own because you were too arrogant to check whose name was on the property title."
"Paige, I'm your father!" Samuel cried out, his voice cracking desperately as he grabbed the gate bars beside his wife. "You can't do this to your own family! You're putting us on the street!"
"You put me on the street on Tuesday night, Samuel," I reminded him coldly. "You sat at the end of that dining table, looked me in the eye, and told me to keep the peace while your wife gave me twenty-four hours to pack my life into two suitcases."
"I made a mistake!" Samuel wept openly now, tears streaming down his face in the bright Arizona sunlight. "I was weak! I should have stood up to her! I should have protected you!"
"Yes," I agreed softly. "You should have. Nine years ago."
I reached out my finger toward the tablet screen.
"Paige! Wait! Don't turn it off! Paige!" Gwendolyn shrieked.
"You have forty-eight hours remaining to vacate my mother's house," I said smoothly. "If my legal team finds one single item of my mother's property missing or damaged when we perform the walkthrough on Monday, I will file formal grand larceny charges against both of you."
May you like
I tapped the button, muting the intercom and disconnecting the video feed.
On the terrace, I picked up my coffee cup, took a slow drink, and walked back inside my modern sanctuary, leaving the panicked voices of my former family echoing uselessly down at the iron gate.
