Chapter 3 - The Eviction
"You can't do this! I am your mother!" Eleanor shrieked as Officer Vance's partner stepped forward, pulling a pair of steel handcuffs from his utility belt. "Ethan! Look at me! I carried you for nine months! I raised you! You're going to put your own mother in handcuffs over a worthless, gold-digging girl?!"
"Touch her again and it'll be resisting arrest, ma'am," Officer Vance warned, grabbing Eleanor's arms and pinning them firmly behind her back.
CLICK.
The metallic sound of handcuffs locking onto my mother’s wrists echoed across the grand marble foyer. She gasped in absolute shock, her eyes bulging as she felt the cold steel bind her hands.
"Natalie! Do something!" Eleanor screamed, her voice cracking with pure rage and terror. "Call our lawyers! Call the press! This is an outrage!"
Natalie backed away into the dining room, her hands shaking as she pulled out her phone. "I'm calling Uncle Richard! He'll stop this!"
"Don't bother, Natalie," David Sloan called out, walking calmly into the foyer with his hands in his pockets. "Your Uncle Richard is a board member of the bank holding the family's credit lines. I spoke with him twenty minutes ago. Once he viewed the preliminary security footage of Claire being forced out into the blizzard, he formally severed all financial association with both of you."
Natalie dropped her phone onto the plush Oriental rug. It cracked against the floorboards.
Officer Vance turned to Natalie. "Miss Vance, you are being named as an accomplice in a felony assault investigation. Hands behind your back, now."
"No! Get away from me!" Natalie screamed, trying to bolt toward the back kitchen door.
She didn't make it three steps before the second officer intercepted her, grabbing her wrist and sweeping her off balance onto the carpet. Within seconds, Natalie was handcuffed beside her mother, sobbing hysterically into the rug, her expensive hair ruined and covered in dust.
"Captain Vance," Officer Vance turned to me while holding Eleanor by her shoulder. "We are placing them under arrest for second-degree assault, reckless endangerment, and failure to render aid. We will process them at the precinct tonight."
"Wait!" Eleanor wept, her stoic facade completely shattered into pathetic desperate cries. "Ethan, please! It's freezing outside! At least let us get our coats! Let us take our purses and jewelry!"
I looked down at my mother.
"Did you let Claire get her coat?" I asked, my voice deadly soft. "Did you give her shoes when you pushed her out the gate?"
Eleanor choked on her words, unable to answer.
"You leave with what you're wearing," I said coldly. "David, lock down the estate. Change every digital lock, revoke every garage code, and notify the neighborhood security team that Eleanor and Natalie Vance are permanently banned from entering these grounds."
"Already done, Ethan," David replied, pulling out an electronic key card and sweeping it across the main door console. The house chimed softly, locking down every entry point with heavy steel deadbolts.
As the police escort pushed my mother and sister down the stone steps toward the back of the patrol cars, their heels slipped on the icy path where Claire had lain hours earlier. Natalie was wailing, her loud sobs cutting through the frozen night air, while Eleanor kept screaming my name, her words disappearing into the howling winter wind.
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I didn't watch them get driven away.
I turned around, climbed into my truck, and followed the ambulance straight to St. Jude’s Emergency Hospital, determined to spend every remaining minute of my return restoring the life my family had tried to destroy.
