Chapter 6: The Fall of the House of Cards
The following Monday was a day of reckoning in Mark's suburban world.
When they returned to Ohio, two repo agents were waiting in the driveway to tow away the leased German sports car. By noon, the local bank had filed a formal foreclosure notice on their four-thousand-square-foot home after learning that Mark had forged his mother’s guarantor signature on the refinancing deeds.
Chloe packed four designer suitcases within forty-eight hours, called a taxi, and moved back into her parents' home in Florida, leaving behind a divorce petition that demanded fifty percent of assets that did not exist.
Mark was left standing alone in the echo-filled living room of the foreclosed house.
The Persian rugs had been rolled up; the luxury furniture had been marked for auction. All that remained was a cardboard box containing his high school yearbooks, his father’s old fishing rod, and a framed photograph of his parents standing outside their small hardware store in 1985.
Mark sat on the dusty floorboards, his back against the bare drywall.
He looked at his father’s face in the photo—a man with grease beneath his fingernails, wearing a five-dollar flannel shirt, smiling with a deep, unshakeable pride that Mark had spent his entire adult life running away from.
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""I lost everything, Dad,"" Mark whispered into the empty room, a ragged sob tearing through his chest. ""I traded everything you gave me for a glass crown.""
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