Chapter 4 - The Entitled Sister
By 8:00 AM the following morning, the front door of Sienna’s Scottsdale home was being hammered with enough force to shake the heavy iron sconces on either side of the entrance.
Sienna was already up. Dressed in an impeccably tailored charcoal-grey suit, her hair pulled back into a severe, sleek ponytail that concealed the faint bruising near her ear, she was sipping black coffee at the kitchen island. On the marble counter rested three sets of documents bound in navy leather folders.
She didn't get up to answer the door. She simply reached for her iPad and unlocked the front security gate via the smart system.
A moment later, the front door burst open.
In walked Chloe Montgomery, Christian’s twenty-six-year-old sister. She was wearing oversized designer sunglasses, yoga pants that cost more than a minimum-wage paycheck, and carrying an empty gym bag. Behind her trailed Christian, looking disheveled in the wrinkled clothes from the night before, his eyes bloodshot and frantic.
"Sienna!" Chloe screeched, strutting into the open-concept kitchen like she owned the square footage. "What the hell is wrong with you? I was at the Equinox spa in North Scottsdale this morning, and my personal trainer said my monthly membership was flagged for non-payment! Then I tried to get gas, and my card bounced! Do you know how embarrassing that was? The girl behind the counter recognized me from Instagram!"
Sienna didn’t look up from her iPad. She took a slow sip of coffee. "Good morning, Chloe."
"Don't give me your passive-aggressive corporate bullshit!" Chloe snapped, slamming her designer purse down onto the counter. "Turn the cards back on! Christian said you had some hysterical episode yesterday because Mom asked you for her regular allowance. You don't get to take your marital issues out on my life!"
Sienna finally set her porcelain cup down. The clatter was tiny, but it commanded the room.
"Your life?" Sienna asked, tilting her head. "Chloe, you are twenty-six years old. You have never held a full-time job. I paid off your eighty-thousand-dollar student loan. I pay your five-hundred-dollar weekly grocery bill. I pay the insurance, maintenance, and gas on the convertible you drive. And I pay twelve thousand dollars a year so you can post pictures of yourself drinking matcha lattes at a luxury gym."
"You did that because you're family!" Chloe yelled, her voice pitching high. "Christian is your husband! His family is your family! You make seven figures a year! What does fifteen hundred dollars for my fitness matter to you?"
"It matters," Sienna said evenly, "because I don't fund parasites who applaud when their mother assaults me."
Christian stepped forward, raising his hands in a placating gesture that looked pathetic compared to his aggression from the night before.
"Sienna, baby, listen to me," he started, his voice dropping into that smooth, manipulative tone he had used whenever he needed her to sign off on an unexpected investment. "Things got out of hand yesterday. Mom was emotional. She shouldn't have hit you—I talked to her all night about it. She’s willing to apologize. But you can't just cut off the entire family’s financial lifeblood over an argument. You’re destroying our stability!"
"Your stability was built on my labor," Sienna replied, opening the first navy folder. "And speaking of your stability, Christian, where did you spend the night?"
Christian stiffened. "We... we went to a hotel. But the cards were down, so we had to stay at a motel down off the expressway."
"How tragic," Sienna murmured. "Did you manage to check your commercial banking app this morning?"
Christian's expression tightened. "No. Why?"
"Because your forged power of attorney for the five-hundred-thousand-dollar property lien was formally reported to the State Attorney General’s Financial Crimes Division at seven-thirty this morning."
The air left Christian’s lungs in a violent hiss. His face went entirely white, the color draining so fast it looked as if he were going to vomit on the marble flooring.
"You... you did what?" he whispered.
"You forged my signature on a notarized deed of trust, Christian," Sienna said, her voice dropping into a register of icy, lethal clarity. "You used an old copy of my driver's license and paid an off-grid mobile notary to stamp it. My corporate attorneys flag every single county filing under my name within sixty seconds of submission. Did you really think you were smarter than a multi-billion-dollar infrastructure legal team?"
"I was going to pay it back!" Christian stammered, stepping toward her, panic breaking through his suave mask. "It was for a development deal in Gilbert! If I closed that land package, I would have made two million! I was doing it for us! For our future!"
"You were doing it because you are a gambler and a fraud," Sienna said, standing up. At five-foot-nine in heels, she looked down at him with complete detachment. "And speaking of vehicles, Chloe..."
Sienna glanced at the window overlooking the circular driveway.
Outside, a heavy flatbed tow truck was backing up toward Chloe’s cherry-red Mercedes convertible. The hydraulic arms were already lowering toward the front tires.
Chloe turned, looked through the panoramic glass, and let out a shriek that sounded like a dying animal. "No! No! My car! What are they doing to my car?!"
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"The lease on that vehicle was taken out under my corporate fleet account," Sienna said, sliding her documents into her briefcase. "I terminated the lease this morning. The dealership sent a recovery team to retrieve their asset. If you want a car, Chloe, I suggest you walk down to the nearest bus stop. The number forty-four bus runs every twenty minutes."
***
