Chapter 6 - The Siege of Bayside Heights
By three o'clock that afternoon, the iron gates of the Bayside Heights mansion were surrounded by three delivery vans and a moving truck. The neighbors were watching from behind their manicured hedges, their phones out, capturing every second of the Vance family’s public execution.
I stood on the gravel driveway, Marcus beside me with a clipboard, while two county sheriffs stood by the front door, their official badges glittering in the pale April light.
The front door burst open, and Prudence came running out, her hair unkempt, her silk blouse wrinkled. “David! Stop this! The movers are taking the piano! That was a gift from Aunt Clara!”
“Aunt Clara died twenty years ago, Prudence,” I said, not moving an inch. “That piano was purchased in 2023 with the money that was supposed to pay for Jamie’s dental work. It’s being sold back to the dealer to cover the hotel bill.”
Gertrude walked out onto the portico, her face pale but her chin still lifted with that stubborn, high-society pride. She looked at the sheriffs, then at her brother. “Marcus, this is a civil matter. You cannot evict us without a sixty-day notice. The law protects tenants!”
“You’re not tenants, Gertrude,” Marcus said, adjusting his glasses as he read from his clipboard. “You are employees of Vance Family Holdings LLC who have been terminated for cause—specifically, gross embezzlement and fraud. The residential allowance was contingent on your performance as caretakers of the estate. Since you chose to turn the estate into a sweatshop for your daughter-in-law, your employment is void, and your right to occupancy terminated at twelve o'clock today.”
“We have nowhere to go!” Gertrude screamed, her voice losing its elite lacquer, sounding raw and desperate. “Our personal accounts are frozen! We can't even rent an apartment!”
“You have the cottage in the valley,” I said.
Gertrude flinched as if I had struck her. The cottage in the valley was a small, two-bedroom stone house that my father had left behind—the place where we had lived before I made my first million in the offshore rigs. It was drafty, small, and smelled of woodsmoke and old wool. It was exactly the kind of house Gertrude had spent thirty years trying to forget.
“You want us to live in that... that hovel?” Prudence shrieked, her fingers digging into her mother’s arm. “My friends live here! My life is here!”
“Your life was built on my son’s hunger, Prudence,” I said, my voice dropping into a register that made the movers stop and look over their shoulders. “You lived in my house for five years while my wife wore rags. You can live in the valley until the trial starts. If you don't like the cottage, you can always ask the county jail if they have any silk sheets available.”
One of the sheriffs stepped forward, his hand resting on his belt. “Ma'am, the truck is loaded with your personal clothing and items identified as prior property. The remaining contents of the house are secured under the court order. You need to step away from the structure now.”
Gertrude looked at the grand limestone facade of the mansion, then at the neighbors watching from the road, and finally at me. For five years, she had thought of me as a machine—a source of dollars that lived six thousand miles away, a boy who could be managed with a few sweet words on a crackling long-distance line.
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She didn't say another word. She turned, her shoulders sagging for the first time in her life, and walked down the gravel path toward the old station wagon that Marcus had left for them. Prudence followed her, sobbing loudly, her high heels sinking into the mud beside the driveway.
As the station wagon rattled through the iron gates, Marcus spat onto the gravel. “That’s the first layer of dirt cleared, David. Now we start the real digging.”
