Chapter 6 - The Desperate Search
Three days later, the seventy-two-hour eviction deadline expired.
Moving trucks were parked outside the Scottsdale estate, but they weren't the high-end white-glove movers Gwendolyn was used to. They were budget rental vans.
Gwendolyn stood on the lawn, screaming into her cell phone as workers packed cheap cardboard boxes into the back of the truck. Her credit cards had been frozen by the bank due to the pending property litigation, and her country club membership had been suspended following a public notice filed by Vance Legal.
Arthur sat on the stone curb near the driveway, his head resting in his hands. His polished world had crumbled in a matter of seventy-two hours.
"Arthur! Get off the ground!" Gwendolyn snapped, rushing over to him, her voice shrill with desperation. "You need to call Paige! Right now!"
Arthur looked up, his eyes hollow and bloodshot. "I’ve called her thirty times, Gwen. Her phone goes straight to voicemail."
"Then go to her friends' houses! Go to her workplace!" Gwendolyn demanded, shaking his shoulder violently. "She is your daughter! She can stop this lawsuit with one phone call! Do you realize what people are saying at the club?! They’re saying we’re being thrown out on the street!"
"We are being thrown out on the street, Gwendolyn!" Arthur finally yelled back, standing up and towering over her, his face flushed with rage. "Because you couldn't leave her alone! You had to push her! You had to demand her bedroom for Chloe’s damn shoes! You pushed my daughter out of this house, and now we have nothing!"
Chloe ran out of the front doors carrying three designer handbags, her face covered in tears. "Mom! The marshals are inside! They’re locking the master bedroom doors! They won't let me get my jewelry!"
"Those are my daughter's personal belongings!" Gwendolyn screamed at a deputy marshal standing on the porch.
"Anything purchased with funds drawn from the estate’s secondary home equity line is subject to asset restraint under the court order, ma'am," the marshal stated coldly, stepping across the threshold and closing the heavy oak doors.
Click.
The heavy deadbolt turned from the inside.
For the first time in her life, Gwendolyn stood outside the massive iron gates of the estate, completely locked out.
"Where are we supposed to sleep tonight, Arthur?!" Gwendolyn cried out, her voice cracking with terror as the reality settled in. "We don't have enough money for a hotel!"
Arthur pulled his phone from his pocket with shaking fingers. He opened a contact he hadn't reached out to in years—Uncle Marcus.
He pressed call.
"Marcus... please," Arthur wept into the receiver the moment the call connected. "Please, just tell me where Paige is. I need to talk to my daughter."
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There was a long silence on the line.
"She’s at home, Arthur," Marcus’s voice replied calmly. "Where she has been all along."
