Chapter 6
The glow of the late afternoon sun cast long, amber shadows across the minimalist living room. Julian sat at the glass-topped dining table, his laptop open alongside his smartphone. The screen was filled with digital copies of bank statements, property deeds, and corporate filings he had pulled up through his professional network. Across the room, Arthur had finally drifted off to sleep in the leather armchair, his breathing deep and steady beneath the heavy wool blanket.
Julian’s phone buzzed sharply against the glass table, vibrating with an incoming call from Sarah, his younger sister who lived on the West Coast. He swiped to answer immediately, bringing the device to his ear.
"Julian? Tell me it’s not true," Sarah’s voice came through the speaker, tight with panic and disbelief. "David just sent me an email claiming dad voluntarily signed over the house and his entire estate to them. He attached a scanned copy of a notarized trust amendment."
"It’s true that they have a signed document, Sarah, but it was obtained under extreme duress," Julian replied, keeping his voice low so as not to wake his father. "They locked him in an uninsulated garage for forty-eight hours with no heat, no bed, and only a bottle of water and a bag of chips. I pulled him out of there this afternoon."
A sharp intake of breath hissed through the phone. "My God. Dad is sixty-five with early-stage cognitive decline. How could they—"
"Greed," Julian said flatly, his fingers drumming a rapid, steady rhythm against the edge of the table. "David lost his landscaping business last year, and Clara’s boutique folded six months ago. They were drowning in debt. They saw dad’s Victorian home and his pension as their ticket out of bankruptcy."
"We need to go to the police," Sarah insisted, her voice rising with righteous indignation. "We need to have them arrested for kidnapping and elder exploitation."
"We will, but we have to do this methodically," Julian cautioned, leaning back in his ergonomic chair. "If we just go storming into a precinct with raw accusations, David’s attorney will stall us with civil property claims, and the civil courts move at a glacial pace. We need concrete proof of coercion, medical records from Dr. Marcus documenting the abuse, and an invalidation of that notary’s signature."
"Do you know who the notary was?" Sarah asked.
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"That’s what I’m tracking down right now," Julian said, his eyes scanning a public records database on his laptop. "David used a mobile notary service operating out of the county seat. If I can prove the notary failed to verify mental competency—which is a legal requirement for any estate transfer involving someone with a documented memory diagnosis—the whole document collapses like a house of cards."
"Find them, Julian," Sarah said fiercely. "And make sure David and Clara pay for every single hour dad spent locked in that hellhole."
