Chapter 3 - The Eviction of Illusions
The Monday morning humiliation at the international terminal had only been the preliminary tremor.
By two o’clock that afternoon, Richard, Eleanor, and Vanessa had returned to Westchester in an ordinary yellow taxi.
The driver had charged them three hundred and forty dollars for the haul back from Queens.
Richard had attempted to pay using his black secondary corporate card.
The terminal reader in the back of the cab had flashed red with an immediate declined notification.
Richard had been forced to rummage through Eleanor’s handbag to find crumpled fifty-dollar bills.
The taxi driver had dumped their six designer trunks onto the gravel driveway of the stone manor.
Vanessa kicked the nearest trunk and threw her phone into the manicured hedges.
She stormed toward the heavy oak front door of the estate, sobbing with frustrated vanity.
She pulled out her brass house key and shoved it into the deadbolt cylinder.
The key slid inside the brass lock, but it refused to turn.
Vanessa twisted the key with violent force until the brass sheared completely off in the mechanism.
She screamed in frustration, pounding both fists against the thick oak paneling.
Eleanor stood on the gravel path, her designer pumps sinking into the wet autumn mud.
She demanded to know why the estate staff had locked them out of their own residence.
A silver sedan pulled into the circular driveway behind their luggage pile.
Nathan Vance stepped out of the vehicle carrying an embossed leather briefcase.
Beside him stood two private security officers in charcoal suits, accompanied by a commercial locksmith.
Richard approached Nathan with his fists clenched, veins protruding against his collar.
He demanded to know what kind of circus Nathan was conducting on his private family property.
Nathan adjusted his tortoiseshell glasses and extracted a cream-colored legal document from his briefcase.
He looked Richard directly in the eyes with absolute clinical indifference.
He corrected Richard regarding the ownership of the ground beneath his feet.
The property, known as Oakridge Manor, was owned wholly by Apex Holdings LLC.
Richard had signed the deed over to the corporation seven years ago in exchange for debt relief.
Nathan reminded Richard of the three million dollars in tax liens that Apex had extinguished on his behalf.
The residence had been categorized under corporate bylaws as a guest asset for executive entertainment.
Richard and Eleanor had been permitted to reside there under a conditional, zero-dollar revocable lease agreement.
Nathan flipped to the final addendum of the contract.
Paragraph fourteen clearly stipulated that occupancy was contingent upon executive discretion without right of tenancy.
At nine o’clock that morning, the board of Apex Holdings had formally terminated the residential license.
Nathan handed the certified court notice directly into Richard’s frozen hands.
Richard stared at the official red seal at the bottom of the eviction document.
His face turned a sickening shade of gray.
He claimed that this was an illegal lockout and that no court would uphold it without thirty days notice.
Nathan informed him that the thirty-day vacate order had been legally filed with the Westchester county clerk at dawn.
The locks were currently being re-keyed to secure the proprietary corporate furnishings inside.
Two shipping containers would be delivered to the front lawn by eight o'clock tomorrow morning.
The private security team would supervise the cataloging of their personal clothing and personal effects.
Every piece of antique furniture, every crystal chandelier, and every oil painting had been purchased with corporate funds.
Those interior assets belonged exclusively to the balance sheet of Apex Freight Logistics.
Eleanor staggered backward, clutching her throat as though the oxygen had been drained from the driveway.
She shrieked that her maternal heirlooms were inside that drawing room.
Nathan opened a separate audit binder and flipped through three years of canceled checks.
He noted that every so-called heirloom had been bought at Christie’s auction house using Arthur’s corporate accounts.
Vanessa ran toward Nathan, pointing a manicured finger within inches of his nose.
She demanded to know what Arthur had done with her Manhattan apartment.
She told Nathan that her Soho loft had nothing to do with this decrepit Westchester estate.
Nathan closed his binder with a heavy, echoing thud.
He informed Vanessa that her apartment was designated as corporate lodging for Apex senior engineers.
A maintenance crew had entered the Soho unit three hours prior under emergency access protocols.
Her personal belongings were currently being packed into cardboard boxes and transferred to a public storage depot.
Her key fob had been deactivated across the entire residential building network.
Furthermore, the lease on her luxury German coupe had been terminated through the commercial dealership.
A flatbed recovery vehicle was already en route to impound the car from the estate garage.
Vanessa stared at Nathan with her mouth hanging open in sheer disbelief.
She reached into her purse to pull out her backup American Express card.
She announced that she would simply book a suite at the St. Regis until her brother regained his sanity.
Nathan smiled thinly and checked his watch.
He noted that Arthur was the primary account holder on every secondary card bearing the Bennett name.
The master corporate credit line had been terminated at midnight on Friday.
Her cards were currently nothing more than embossed rectangles of decorative plastic.
Eleanor collapsed onto the nearest leather trunk, sobbing without tears into her fox-fur collar.
She asked Nathan how Arthur could treat his own flesh and blood with such cold-blooded barbarism.
She asked what kind of ungrateful monster threw his elderly parents onto the street.
Nathan looked down at the weeping matriarch without a trace of sympathy.
He stated that Arthur had covered their debts for ten years while they treated his wife like an unpaid domestic servant.
He added that throwing ice water onto a seven-month pregnant woman was considered assault under state penal law.
Nathan advised them to refrain from contacting Clara Bennett directly under any circumstances.
A formal petition for a temporary order of protection had already been drafted for filing in family court.
Richard crumpled the eviction papers in his trembling fist.
He looked toward the locked front door of the mansion he had claimed as his empire for twenty years.
The locksmith’s drill whined sharply as the old brass tumbler was bored out of the oak frame.
A new high-security digital deadbolt clicked smoothly into place.
Richard turned toward Nathan, his voice cracking into a broken, desperate rasp.
He asked where they were supposed to sleep tonight.
May you like
Nathan snapped his briefcase shut and turned toward his sedan.
He suggested that they try dining in the kitchen of an economy motel.
