Chapter 5 - The Eviction of the Queen
The mansion was left in an eerie, ringing silence, broken only by Patricia’s ragged, wheezing breaths from the sofa.
My father gently took my mother’s arm, helping her carry baby Lily out to their car to wait in the warmth away from the toxic remnants of the room.
I stood by the dining table, watching Patricia attempt to pull herself together.
She smoothed down her designer skirt with trembling hands, trying to adjust her pearl necklace, her eyes darting around the lavish room as if searching for an escape that didn't exist.
"You think you won, don't you?" Patricia spat, her voice raspy and trembling with venomous rage. "You think you're clever. But when the news hits the papers tomorrow, the Whitmore name will survive. We have friends in the state supreme court. We have allies on Wall Street."
"You don't have anyone, Patricia," Arthur Bennett said, pulling another document from his briefcase and placing it squarely in front of her. "Your friends on Wall Street were the ones who shorted your son's stock last week when the audit rumors began."
Patricia stared at the document on the table.
It was an emergency notice of premises vacancy signed by the court-appointed bankruptcy receiver.
"This property has been placed under federal receivership to secure restitution for the defrauded Whitmore Global pension holders," Bennett explained calmly. "Under the terms of the court order, all non-owner residents have twelve hours to vacate the premises."
Patricia’s mouth opened, her throat working soundlessly.
"Vacate?" she whispered, clutching the armrest of the sofa. "I have lived in this mansion for thirty years! My husband built this house!"
"Your husband built it," I said, walking over to her. "And your son mortgaged it to the dirt to pay off a mistress while you cheered him on."
"Where am I supposed to go?" Patricia cried, tears cutting deep tracks through her powdered cheeks. "All of my personal cards are linked to the family trust! I have no cash!"
"You can take whatever fits in your suitcase, Patricia," I replied, deliberately echoing the exact words she had snarled at me less than an hour ago. "The locks are being changed tonight."
Patricia stared at me, the utter humiliation finally sinking into the deepest corners of her soul.
She had spent five years treating me like an expendable servant who could be dismissed on a whim.
Now, she was an old woman sitting in an empty, foreclosed mansion, with no money, two sons in federal detention, and nowhere to sleep.
"Claire, please," Patricia pleaded, her voice dropping into a desperate, groveling whine. "You wouldn't turn an elderly woman out into the winter cold. Think of Lily. I am her grandmother!"
"You renounced Lily twenty minutes ago, Patricia," I said, pointing toward the open front door where the cold February wind was whistling through the foyer. "You called her a bastard in front of my parents. You told me to take that child and get out."
I leaned down until my face was inches from hers.
"Now get out of my sight before I have Agent Miller add obstruction of justice to your file."
Patricia scrambled up from the sofa like a frightened animal.
She didn't grab her fur coat. She didn't check her jewelry box.
She snatched her handbag and shuffled toward the door on unsteady heels, clutching the doorframe as she stumbled out into the freezing rain to hail a cab from the highway gate.
Arthur Bennett walked over to the front door, pushed it shut, and turned the heavy brass deadbolt with a satisfying, final click.
May you like
"The locksmith is waiting at the end of the driveway, Mrs. Whitmore," Bennett smiled gently. "Would you like him to re-key the estate now?"
"Yes, Mr. Bennett," I answered, feeling the suffocating weight of five years lift completely from my chest. "Change every single lock."
