“You assumed?” I said, looking at my brother with a mixture of pity and disgust. “You tried to trick our parents into signing over ownership rights in exchange for paying a debt that didn’t exist.”
“We weren’t tricking them!” Vanessa shrieked, her poise completely gone. “We’re family. It all goes to us eventually anyway. We just accelerated the timeline because we need it now. Do you have any idea how expensive babies are? Do you have any idea the lifestyle we’re trying to maintain?”
“I don’t care about your lifestyle,” I said. “I care about the fact that you ripped out my mother’s sewing room.”
“It’s a nursery!” Vanessa screamed. “I need a nursery! You’re being hysterical!”
Then her eyes sharpened.
“Look, fine. You paid for the house. Good for you, moneybags. But possession is what matters. We live here. Our stuff is here. We’re receiving mail here. You can’t just kick out a pregnant woman and her husband. We have rights. We’re tenants.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. A smug, triumphant look returning to her face. She thought she had me. She thought she knew the law. She thought that because she had moved her shoes in, she was untouchable.
“I’m glad you brought that up,” I said.
I reached into my bag. The rustle of the paper was the only sound in the room.
“I actually spoke to my lawyer, Alan, about three minutes ago while I was upstairs looking at the damage you caused to my property.”
I pulled out the blue folder. I didn’t open it yet. I just held it, tapping it against my palm.
“You see, Vanessa, to be a tenant, you usually need a lease or you need to have paid rent. You’ve done neither. According to state law, since you’ve been here less than thirty days—which I can prove since I have the text messages from Jason asking for the gate code three weeks ago—you are considered guests at will.”
Vanessa’s smirk wavered.
“We’ve been here—well, it feels like longer. You can’t prove when we moved in.”
“I have the security camera logs,” I lied smoothly. I didn’t, but she didn’t know that. “And I have the dated receipts from the movers you hired. Don’t try to bluff me, Vanessa. I do this for a living.”
I opened the folder. I pulled out the deed of trust. It was a thick document embossed with the county seal.
“This,” I said, holding it up so everyone could see the gold stamp, “is the deed. It lists the owner of this property as the Martha and David irrevocable trust. And do you know who the sole trustee is?”
I looked her dead in the eye.
“Me.”
I slammed the deed down on the table right next to the cake. The plastic stand rattled.
“And as the trustee,” I said, my voice ringing out with the finality of a judge’s gavel, “I am officially revoking your guest privileges.”
The silence that followed my declaration was heavy, suffocating. It felt as if all the oxygen had been sucked out of the room, leaving only the scent of expensive perfume and the distinct smell of panic. Vanessa stared at the deed on the table. For the first time since I had known her, she looked genuinely unsure of her footing.
But Vanessa was a creature of ego, and when cornered, ego doesn’t surrender. It lashes out.
She let out a sharp, incredulous laugh. It sounded brittle, like glass breaking.
“You’re revoking guest privileges,” she repeated, looking around at her friends as if inviting them to share the joke. “Did you hear that? She thinks she can just kick us out. Georgia, stop being dramatic. You’re ruining the vibe.”