Chapter 5 - The Ambush at the Iron Gate
"Paige, you are humiliating your family in front of the entire neighborhood!" Mom’s voice snapped through the intercom, jarring me out of my memories.
I stood up from my desk and walked to the panoramic French doors of my second-floor office, looking down through the trees toward the entrance.
The scene at the gate had escalated. Grant had unstrapped a stained floral sofa from the back of the truck and set it directly onto the wet gravel. Mallory’s three children—two unruly boys around eight and ten, and a six-year-old girl—were kicking the decorative iron bars of my perimeter gate, leaving muddy smudges all over the matte black finish.
"Look at this grass, Grant," Mallory was saying loudly, pointing past the fence toward my perennial garden. "We can put an above-ground pool right over there by the willows. The kids need outdoor space. And that wrap-around porch has plenty of room for your smoker."
They were already carving up my home like a Thanksgiving turkey.
I keyed the microphone on my desk console. "Grant, pick that sofa up off my driveway. And Mallory, tell your sons to stop kicking my gate before they trigger the perimeter alarm."
Mallory gasped, glaring directly into the camera lens. "Are you threatening your own nephews, Paige? They’re just babies! They’ve been cooped up in the car for hours because we had to pack in a hurry! Have some basic human decency and press the remote!"
"Why did you leave your duplex, Mallory?" I asked, my voice chillingly calm. "The last I heard from our cousin, Grant had a steady job at the county distribution center."
Grant stepped into frame, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his grease-stained hand. "That company was toxic, Paige. Management had unrealistic expectations. Then our landlord decided to raise the rent by three hundred dollars just to push us out. Mom sold the Elm Street place to settle some legal issues we were dealing with, and the buyer wanted immediate possession. We had nowhere else to turn. But then Mom found that magazine article about your business. You’ve got five bedrooms in that main house and a whole heated outbuilding! There’s plenty of room for all of us."
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"You came here without calling," I noted. "Without asking. You packed a twenty-six-foot truck and drove three hours assuming you could just move into my house."
"Of course we didn't call!" Mom cut in, her voice rising in shrill indignation. "If we had called, you would have made up some ridiculous excuse not to help. You've always been cold and detached, Paige. But blood is blood. You didn't get all this wealth on your own—God blessed you so you could take care of your family. Now stop this nonsense, open the gate, and let us in out of the cold!"
