After years of no contact, my mother suddenly showed up at my restaurant. “Your sister’s unemployed—hand this place over to her,” she demanded. When I offered her a server position instead, she shoved me and splashed water in my face. “She’s precious—how dare you make her serve?” she screamed. I didn’t cry. I just replied coldly, “Then get used to being homeless.” She had no idea whose house they were living in…

“Apex Development is one of the largest corporate real estate developers on the West Coast,” Mr. Sterling confirmed, tapping a thick file. “They have been eyeing that specific acreage for a luxury condominium project for two years. They don’t want the house; they want the dirt it sits on. They are paying entirely in cash. The three million dollars has already been wired into our secure escrow account, Maya.”

Mr. Sterling leaned forward, his voice dropping into a serious, legally binding cadence.

“The second your pen leaves this paper, the property belongs to Apex Development,” he explained. “And because Apex is a commercial entity intent on immediate demolition, their legal team does not play games. Upon closing, they will petition the county judge for an immediate, 72-hour emergency writ of possession due to unauthorized squatters on a commercial demolition site. The sheriff will execute the eviction.”

There would be no thirty-day notice. There would be no lengthy appeals in housing court. They would be ripped from their reality with the brutal, unstoppable force of corporate law

I thought about the ice water hitting my face. I thought about the dirty apron Chloe had treated like a biohazard. I thought about the night I had slept in my car at twenty-two, freezing and terrified, because my mother decided a credit card bill was worth more than my safety.

I picked up the heavy, gold-plated Montblanc pen from the desk.