Chapter 7 - The Desperate Mask Slips
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"Give me that!" Patricia shrieked, lunging across the corner of the table toward Arthur’s tablet with her manicured hands outstretched like claws.
The lead deputy immediately stepped into her path, intercepting her wrists with firm, practiced authority. "Ma'am, do not touch that evidence. Step back immediately."
"Get your filthy hands off me!" Patricia screamed, her face contorting into an ugly, wild mask of fury that horrified everyone in the room. The refined, elegant matriarch was entirely gone; in her place was a cornered, bitter woman stripped of her illusion. "This is my house! Everything in here belongs to my family! She is nothing! She was supposed to pay our debts and shut her mouth!"
The remaining guests gasped audibly. Several women covered their mouths in disbelief. The truth had spilled out of Patricia's own mouth in front of forty of the most prominent citizens in the state.
"She was supposed to know her place!" Patricia continued to rant, struggling weakly against the deputy’s grip. "She was an outsider! A mechanic’s granddaughter! She owed us her money for the privilege of carrying the Hawthorne name!"
"My father wasn't a mechanic, Patricia," Evelyn said, her voice cutting through the woman’s hysterical screeching like a razor. "He was a self-made builder who constructed three thousand homes for working families in this county. He taught me the value of honest labor, of honoring contracts, and of never looking down on anyone."
Evelyn glanced down at the gravy dried across her silk dress.
"You thought this dress made me small," Evelyn murmured. "You thought soaking me in grease would break my spirit. But clothes can be burned, Patricia. Disgrace, however... disgrace lasts forever."
Arthur Vance turned to the lead deputy. "Officer, in accordance with the emergency deed certification issued by Judge Reynolds at four-fifteen today, the absolute title of Hawthorne Manor rests exclusively with Evelyn Cross. As the sole owner, she has the legal right to request the immediate removal of all non-leaseholding occupants."
Daniel looked up, his jaw slack, his chest heaving with panic. "Wait... what? You're evicting us? Tonight?"
"Not tonight, Daniel," Evelyn said, looking him dead in the eyes. "Right now."
"Evelyn, you can't do this!" Daniel pleaded, dropping to his knees on the marble floor beside the broken glass. He looked up at her, completely stripped of pride, clutching the hem of his dark suit. "Where are we supposed to go? My mother has nowhere to stay! Her accounts are frozen! We have no cash!"
"Run home," Evelyn echoed Patricia’s exact words from twenty minutes earlier, her voice smooth and steady. "To whatever little apartment you crawled out of."
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👉 As the deputies moved to escort Patricia and Daniel out the front door, the lead auditor uncovered an even darker secret hidden inside Daniel’s phone.
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