Chapter 5 - The Eviction of Barbara Cross
Twenty-four hours after Bradley’s arrest made the front page of the regional business section—*LOCAL ARCHITECT ARRESTED FOR EMBEZZLING WIFE’S VENTURE FIRM*—Barbara Cross arrived at my corporate headquarters.
She didn't come with contrition. She came like a hurricane wrapped in a discount polyester pantsuit.
She breached the thirty-eighth-floor lobby, screaming at the receptionists, knocking over an architectural model of our downtown expansion, and demanding to see “the monster who locked up my son.”
Marcus met her at the glass entrance of the executive suite, standing like an iron pillar between her and my private office.
“Let her in, Marcus,” I said through the intercom.
Barbara stormed into my office, her eyes bulging with hysteria, her handbag swinging wildly. She didn't sit down. She slammed both palms onto my desk.
“You drop the charges right now!” she screamed, spittle flying across the polished wood. “You drop them this instant, Madeleine! Bradley is in a holding cell with murderers and drug dealers! He has sensitive skin; he can’t sleep on concrete! What kind of sick, vindictive creature ruins her own husband over a little family prank?”
I leaned back in my leather ergonomic chair, holding a bone-china cup of black coffee. I didn't blink. I didn't raise my voice.
“Sit down, Barbara,” I said.
“I will not sit down in the den of the devil!” she shrieked. “We are going to sue you! I spoke to an attorney this morning! Bradley is entitled to half of this building, half of your accounts, and ten years of spousal support! You think you’re so smart with your fancy suits, but the courts favor family! You abandoned him in the mountains, you starved us, and you fabricated those banking records!”
“Have you finished?” I asked, setting my cup down with a delicate clink.
Barbara’s chest heaved. “You’re an evil, sterile woman who never knew how to keep a man happy. Bradley came to me crying every week about how you treated him like an employee! Chloe Jenkins gave him the warmth you never had!”
A thin smile touched my lips. “I’m glad you mentioned Chloe.”
I opened a manila folder resting on my desk and slid a single sheet of paper across the mahogany toward her.
“What is this trash?” Barbara sneered, squinting at the document.
“That is Chloe Jenkins’s signed cooperation agreement with the District Attorney’s office,” I replied evenly. “Chloe flipped twenty minutes after Bradley’s arrest. She handed over twelve months of text messages, bank transfers, and recordings of Bradley detailing how they planned to bleed Vance Construction dry before filing for an uncontested divorce in Delaware.”
Barbara froze. Her eyes darted across the paper.
“Furthermore,” I continued, leaning forward, “Chloe revealed that you were the one who suggested opening the Starlight Properties account in the first place. You told Bradley that since I was an orphan with no siblings, no one would ever audit the subcontractor accounts. You told him that my money belonged to the Cross family by divine right.”
Barbara’s hands began to shake. The anger on her face suddenly looked thin, fragile, like cheap veneer peeling away from rotten wood.
“That’s... that’s a lie,” she stammered. “Chloe is a tramp. You can’t trust a tramp.”
“The District Attorney trusts her bank statements, Barbara. And so does the IRS. But that’s the state’s problem. Let’s talk about my problem.”
I slid a second document across the desk. This one had a bold red stamp across the header: *NOTICE TO VACATE.*
Barbara looked down at it. “What is this? Oakridge Manor? That’s my house!”
“No, Barbara,” I said, looking her directly in the eyes. “It’s *my* house.”
Her mouth opened, but no sound came out.
“Two years ago, when the bank initiated foreclosure on your beloved colonial home, Bradley begged me to save it,” I explained, my tone clinical and detached. “He told you that he secured a private refinancing loan through his architectural connections. That was a lie. I purchased the note directly from the lender through an offshore subsidiary. I paid off the four hundred thousand dollars in back taxes. The title of 142 Oakridge Lane is held one hundred percent by Vance Asset Management.”
“You... you wouldn't,” Barbara whispered, clutching her chest. “My family has lived in that house for thirty years! My grandmother died in that bedroom!”
“Then you should have treated the woman who paid for the roof with basic human decency,” I said. “For four years, you sat at my Thanksgiving table and insulted my lineage. You told my guests that I was cold, that I didn't know how to clean, that Bradley settled for me because he was too kind-hearted to leave a plain girl alone. You watched your sons drag me by my hair toward a frozen pool, and you clapped like a trained seal.”
I stood up. I walked around the desk until I was standing over her. Barbara shrank back into her chair, looking suddenly very small, very old, and utterly defeated.
“You have forty-eight hours to clear your personal belongings from Oakridge Lane,” I whispered. “At twelve-zero-one on Thursday afternoon, the locks will be changed. The furniture—which was purchased under my interior design accounts—will be placed into an estate liquidation auction. The house will be listed on the public market by Friday morning.”
“Madeleine, please,” Barbara sobbed, tears finally breaking through her makeup, carving ugly gray trenches down her wrinkled cheeks. She reached out to touch the hem of my trousers, but I stepped back, avoiding her grasp as if she were a carrier of the plague. “Where am I supposed to go? Kevin doesn't have an apartment anymore! Bradley is in jail! I don't have any savings!”
“You have the six hundred and eighty thousand dollars Bradley stole from me,” I said. “Oh, wait. You don't. The state froze the Starlight account this morning under the Asset Forfeiture Act.”
I walked to the office door and pulled it open.
Marcus was standing right outside.
“Marcus,” I said, not looking back. “Escort Mrs. Cross off the property. If she sets foot in this building, on the Oakridge property, or within five hundred yards of my person again, have her arrested immediately for criminal harassment.”
“No! Madeleine! Please! Bradley is your husband! We are your family!” Barbara shrieked as Marcus firmly took her by the elbow and guided her down the marble corridor.
May you like
Her wails echoed through the elevator shaft until the bronze doors slid shut, cutting her off forever from the world she had tried so greedily to steal.
***