“No, I am simply informing you that the ride is over,” I said before hanging up the phone.
Over the next few hours, Chloe sent a barrage of twenty hateful messages calling me “trash” and “peasant,” which I promptly forwarded to Meredith. I also sent my CFO several suspicious logs showing small, frequent withdrawals from the company’s operating budget that had been disguised as vendor fees.
I slept better that night than I had in years.
Three days later, they returned much earlier than they had planned, looking ragged and furious rather than relaxed and tanned. I was waiting for them in the grand foyer, dressed in a sharp white suit with my hair pulled back in a tight, professional bun.
Meredith stood beside me along with two junior associates and a stern-looking process server. Preston slammed the front door so hard the glass rattled, while Beatrice marched in behind him with a face turned beet-red from fury.
“What the hell is this circus doing in my living room?” Preston demanded.
Meredith stepped forward with a composed expression and handed him a heavy manila folder. “Mr. Preston Miller, you are being served with a petition for divorce, an emergency order for exclusive occupancy of this residence, and a criminal complaint for financial fraud.”
Beatrice let out a high-pitched, hysterical laugh. “You can’t kick us out of our own family home!”
Meredith didn’t even flinch as she adjusted her glasses. “Precisely because this is not, and has never been, your home, we absolutely can.”
The silence that followed was so heavy that Chloe actually took off her designer shades to see if we were joking. On Preston’s face, the anger slowly drained away, replaced by a cold, hollow look of pure panic.
PART 2
Preston took several long seconds to find his voice, glancing at the foyer walls and then at his mother as if he expected the architecture itself to defend him. “This is absurd, Julianne; tell these people to stop this nonsense right now.”
“It isn’t nonsense, Preston; it is the inevitable consequence of you treating my life like your personal ATM,” I replied.
Beatrice took a menacing step toward me with her finger shaking in the air. “What you are doing is elder abuse after everything my son has sacrificed to give you a respectable name.”