Chapter 7 - The Eviction Notice
At three o'clock that afternoon, a sleek black town car pulled up to the gated entrance of Ashford House.
The heavy steel chains were gone, replaced by three Cook County Sheriff cruisers and a flatbed tow truck. Standing on the circular gravel driveway were two uniformed deputies, Amelia Cross, Daniel, and myself.
Grant stepped out of the town car, accompanied by Richard Vance. Gone was the arrogant billionaire who had sneered at me from the garden bench; Grant’s suit was wrinkled, his hair was disheveled, and his eyes were bloodshot with desperation.
"Clara," Grant said, ignoring the deputies and walking toward me with outstretched hands. "Clara, please. We need to talk. Privately. Without the lawyers."
"Stay where you are, Mr. Bennett," Deputy Miller commanded, stepping between us with one hand resting calmly on his utility belt.
"Clara, they’re freezing my accounts!" Grant pleaded, his voice cracking with genuine panic. "The SEC issued an asset freeze on Bennett Capital two hours ago! The lenders are calling in the bridge loans! If you don't release the lien on Ashford House and sign the loan authorization, the firm will go into Chapter 7 bankruptcy by Friday! Everything I built will be gone!"
I looked at the man I had loved for a decade, the man I had built a home with, the man who had abandoned his sick daughter in a freezing garden to run to another woman. I felt no anger. I felt no hatred. I felt only a profound, liberating emptiness.
"You didn't build Ashford House, Grant," I said softly. "My family did. And you didn't build Bennett Capital with your brilliant investments; you built it with my trust fund, which you systematically looted while I was raising our daughter."
"I did it for our family!" Grant cried, taking another step forward before the deputy blocked him. "Everything I did was to secure Lucy’s future!"
"By framing her mother as a drug addict?" Daniel’s voice cut through the air like a cold blade. He stepped forward, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with me. "By sending your mistress into a nine-year-old child's bedroom to plant narcotics and slice her mother’s face out of her pictures? Is that how you secure Lucy’s future, Grant?"
Grant glared at Daniel with raw, unadulterated venom. "You stay out of this, Reeves! You're an outsider! You're just waiting like a vulture to pick the bones of my marriage!"
"Daniel isn't a vulture, Grant," I said. "He’s a man who showed up when you walked away. He’s the man who protected Lucy while you were busy hiding stolen money in Sloane’s shell company."
Amelia Cross stepped forward, holding out a thick legal packet. "Mr. Bennett, this is a formal writ of assistance issued by the chancery court. Your personal belongings have been removed from the master suite, inventoried under police supervision, and packed into the storage units listed on page four. You have twenty minutes to collect your personal vehicle from the garage. After that, any attempt to set foot on Ashford estate grounds will result in immediate arrest for criminal trespass."
Grant looked at the papers, then looked up at the towering limestone facade of the mansion—the grand slate roof, the leaded glass windows, the eighty-seven years of Ashford heritage that he had tried so desperately to steal.
"Where is Sloane?" Grant asked suddenly, his voice trembling. "She said she was coming here to meet me. She has the emergency liquidity accounts."
I pulled out my phone and checked a message Amelia had received five minutes prior from the state police.
"Sloane isn't coming, Grant," I said quietly.
Grant blinked, uncomprehending. "What?"
"Miss Mercer was detained forty-five minutes ago at O'Hare International Airport," Amelia explained with devastating calm. "She was attempting to board a private charter flight to the Cayman Islands. In her carry-on luggage, customs agents found three million dollars in bearer bonds, four bearer passports, and a platinum Cartier necklace featuring Colombian emeralds belonging to the Ashford Trust."
Grant swayed on his feet, his face turning an impossible shade of chalky white. "She... she took the bonds? But that was... that was my offshore reserve. She told me she was keeping them safe in her vault."
"She didn't love you, Grant," I said, looking him dead in the eyes. "She loved Ashford House. She loved my mother's emeralds. And she loved the money she thought she could steal from my daughter’s future. The moment the ship began to sink, she took the lifeboats and left you to drown."
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Grant Bennett stood alone on the gravel driveway of the estate he had tried to conquer, his empire in ruins, his mistress in federal custody, and his family lost to him forever.
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