Chapter 2 - The Mother’s Ultimatum
The call connected on the second ring.
"Marcus," I spoke into the receiver, keeping my eyes locked on Ryan’s trembling hands.
Marcus Sterling—the senior managing partner of Sterling, Vance & Caldwell and my father’s former personal attorney before my father surrendered his faculties to pride—cleared his throat on the line. His voice was an unhurried, rhythmic baritone forged in thirty years of corporate chancery warfare.
"Maya," Marcus said. "I’m looking at the county recording docket. The deed cleared the auditor's registry forty minutes ago. You are the legal owner of record. Have you taken physical possession?"
"I am standing in the kitchen, Marcus," I said. "Along with my brother, his wife, two children, and fifty boxes of furniture they unloaded while I was driving up from Seattle."
A sharp, incredulous breath hissed through Marcus’s teeth. "Are you telling me Robert and Beverly followed through on the Spokane conveyance?"
I paused. The air in my chest turned to freezing glass.
"What do you mean, 'followed through', Marcus?"
"Maya," Marcus’s tone shifted instantly from administrative efficiency to clinical, predatory alarm. "Put me on speakerphone. Right now."
Before I could tap the screen, Ryan’s phone on the counter erupted with a frantic, vibrating ringtone: MOM CELL.
Ryan snatched the device as if it were an oxygen mask in a depressurizing cabin. "Mom! Mom, Maya is here! She’s waving a deed! Her name is on the title! What the hell did Dad do with the paperwork?!"
He hit the speaker button.
Beverly Vance’s voice blasted through the vaulted great room, shrill, breathless, and laced with that theatrical, manipulative fury she had weaponized against our household for twenty-five years.
"Ryan, shut up and listen to me!" my mother screamed through the phone. "Is your sister there?! Put her on the phone immediately!"
I stepped toward the island, leaning over the counter, my voice smooth and level. "I’m here, Mother."
"Maya Lin Vance!" Beverly shrieked, the audio clipping against the speaker diaphragm. "You stop this childish nonsense right this instant! Do you have any idea what your brother has sacrificed for this family?! He has two small children! His company was three days from qualifying for the state highway corridor contracts! Your father and I authorized that move-in! That property was selected for the Vance family estate!"
"The Vance family estate?" I laughed—a short, cold, razor-sharp sound that made Kelsey flinch backward against the cabinets.
"Mother, I paid one million and forty-two thousand dollars from my private Vanguard accounts. I didn't take a dime from you. I didn't ask Dad for a co-sign. I haven't taken a single cent from your household since I was eighteen years old and paid my own tuition at the University of Washington while you bought Ryan his third BMW."
"You are selfish!" Beverly wailed, shifting tactics with the speed of an experienced courtroom perjurer. "You have always been selfish! You hoard your money in those computer accounts while your brother struggles to feed his babies! What is a million dollars to you?! You make six figures sitting in your pajamas writing code! Ryan works in the dirt! He builds things!"
"He builds debts, Mother," I replied coldly.
"Your father is having chest pains, Maya!" Beverly cried, her voice climbing into an octave of pure, emotional extortion. "He is lying on the sofa right now with his nitroglycerin pills! If you throw your brother and his innocent children out into the cold, you will be the reason your father doesn't survive the night! We raised you! We gave you an education! You owe this family your generosity!"
"Mrs. Vance," Marcus Sterling’s voice boomed through my phone’s speaker, cutting through my mother’s hysteria with the density of an iron vault door swinging shut.
The other end of the line went completely, horrifyingly dead silent.
"Who... who is that?" Beverly stammered, her breath catching in a dry, rattling wheeze.
"My name is Marcus Sterling, senior litigation counsel for your daughter," Marcus said, every word dropping like a lead weight onto the table.
"And I suggest you choose your next words with extreme care, Beverly.
Because if Robert is experiencing genuine cardiac distress, you should be dialing nine-one-one...
not attempting to execute an unrecorded fraudulent conveyance of real property in violation of Washington Revised Code Section 9A.60.020."
"Marcus...?" Beverly’s voice dropped from screaming outrage into sheer, unadulterated terror. "You... you hired Marcus Sterling, Maya?!"
"I didn't hire him today, Mother," I said softly, looking straight into Ryan’s pale, sweat-streaked face.
"Marcus has been auditing my accounts for six months.
May you like
And according to the documents he just reviewed...
this house isn't the only thing you stole from me."
