Chapter 8 - Stripped to the Studs
By midnight on Wednesday, the psychological warfare had completely turned.
Judith and Nolan spent thirty-six straight hours trying to contact every lawyer, politician, and banker in the state to get the freeze lifted or the ninety-nine-year lease invalidated. But Jonathan Drake had built an ironclad cage. Representative Marcus Vance—Judith’s brother—had publicly distanced himself after the local press received an anonymous leak regarding the state ethics inquiry into Apex Logistics.
Judith had no money, no allies, and precisely twenty-four hours left on the construction lien clock before Parcel 4B went to sheriff’s auction.
At 7:00 a.m. on Thursday, Wyatt called me.
"Tessa, you need to come down to the site," Wyatt said, his tone grim. "We’ve got a situation."
I threw on a pair of jeans and a work jacket, driving straight to the ridge. When I arrived, the morning fog was still lifting off the grass.
Judith’s silver Lexus—the only car she had left that wasn't seized—was parked crookedly across the ditch. Near the front porch of the farmhouse, Judith was standing in mud-soaked slippers, holding a crowbar.
She had attempted to pry open the heavy plywood Wyatt’s crew had bolted over the French doors. Her hands were blistered, her manicured nails broken and bleeding, her eyes wild with complete delirium.
Wyatt was standing twenty feet back with two of his crew, holding up his phone, recording every second.
"Judith!" I called out, walking past the concrete barriers. "Put the crowbar down."
Judith whipped around. Her hair was a tangled nest of gray and blonde, her face streaked with dirt and dried tears. She looked like a woman who had completely lost her grip on reality.
"This is MY house!" she screamed, her voice hoarse and ragged. "My father planted those oak trees! My grandfather cleared this ridge! You are an outsider! You came into this town with your city money and stole my boy, and now you’re stealing my heritage!"
"You sold your heritage when you signed that ninety-nine-year lease to get my two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, Judith," I said, walking steadily toward her without an ounce of fear. "You wanted a luxury farmhouse to show off to your society friends, but you didn't want to pay for it. You wanted Nolan to have an obedient wife who funded his lifestyle while you pulled the strings."
"I’ll burn it down!" she shrieked, waving the crowbar toward the structure. "I’ll burn the whole damn thing to ash before I let you have it!"
"Go ahead," I said calmly, stopping ten feet away. "Wyatt's cameras have been recording since you drove into the ditch at four a.m. That house is insured under a three-hundred-thousand-dollar commercial builder’s risk policy with my LLC as the sole loss payee. If you strike a match, Judith, you won't just lose the land. You’ll spend the next ten years in a state penitentiary for first-degree arson. And Nolan won't have enough money to put five dollars on your commissary account."
Judith’s arms began to tremble. The weight of the iron crowbar seemed to pull her whole body downward.
"Why are you doing this to us?" she wept, the rage crumbling into pathetic self-pity. "We were family, Tessa."
"You lost the right to call me family the day you helped Nolan move his mistress into the bed I bought," I replied, my voice slicing through the cold morning air. "Now drop the bar before Wyatt calls the state police."
The crowbar slipped from Judith’s numb fingers, thudding heavily into the damp sod. She collapsed onto her knees, burying her face in her dirty hands, wailing like an injured animal.
Just then, Nolan’s pickup truck pulled up behind Judith’s car. Nolan jumped out, looking disheveled, hollow-eyed, wearing the same clothes he had worn two days ago. He ran over and knelt beside his mother, wrapping his arms around her trembling frame.
He looked up at me, his eyes filled with a mixture of terror and desperation.
"Tessa, please," Nolan begged, his voice cracking. "Look at her. She’s having a nervous breakdown. Isn't this enough? You took the furniture, you took the bank accounts, you ruined our names in this town. What more do you want from us?!"
"The clock expires at five o'clock today, Nolan," I said, looking down at both of them with cold detachment. "Three hundred and ten thousand dollars in certified funds, or the sheriff executes the lien on Parcel 4B. Tell your mother to sign over the quitclaim deed to the raw land, and I’ll drop the criminal embezzlement charges against you."
Nolan froze. He looked down at his mother, then back up at me. "The deed? You want the entire family parcel? The land that’s been in our family for four generations?!"
May you like
"It’s either the land, Nolan," I said, turning my back on them to walk toward Wyatt, "or you go to state prison for wire fraud, and your mother goes to county jail for breaking and entering. You have until five p.m. to decide which one you love more: your dirt, or your freedom."
***
