Chapter 5 - Ejected from the Manor
The realization that their empire of lies had collapsed in less than half an hour finally broke Robert’s spirit. The arrogant patriarch sank heavily into the leather armchair behind his desk, staring blankly at the wall as if he had aged ten years in ten minutes.
Patricia stood paralyzed in the center of the room, her chest heaving, looking around at the empty doorway where high-society acquaintances had already fled like rats deserting a sinking ship.
“You can’t throw us out,” Patricia whispered, her voice cracking with pathetic desperation. “We have nowhere to go. This is our home.”
Jack walked slowly over to his stepmother, looking down at her with a calm, unreadable expression.
“It was never your home, Patricia,” Jack said quietly. “It was my father’s legacy. A legacy you and Robert tried to steal from the day he passed away. You lived here for years playing the queen of society on borrowed time and stolen deeds.”
He turned to Robert, who refused to lift his head.
“You have forty-eight hours to pack your personal belongings and vacate the premises,” Jack continued, his tone uncompromising. “After that, the locks change, and the estate goes under full structural audit. If you attempt to contact my family or interfere with the property again, I will personally ensure you spend your remaining years facing criminal fraud charges.”
Patricia let out a loud, wretched sob, collapsing onto the velvet sofa in a heap of designer silk and ruined mascara. But nobody moved to comfort her. The cruelty she had dished out so freely over the years had finally come back to claim her.
“Come on, kids,” Jack said softly, turning around and extending his hands to Tyler and Emma. “Let’s go inside. Your mother made pancakes this morning, and they’re waiting in the kitchen.”
Emma wiped the last trace of dirt from her knee, clutching her slightly crumpled birthday card proudly against her chest.
“Can we eat them in the living room, Dad?” she asked brightly.
May you like
“Wherever you want, sweetheart,” Jack smiled, lifting her up into his arms.
As we walked out of the study, leaving Robert and Patricia drowning in the wreckage of their own greed, I looked back one last time at the grand, towering mansion. The marble pillars were the same, the crystal chandeliers still sparkled overhead, but the darkness that had haunted the hallways for over a decade was finally gone.
