Chapter 4 - THE DEPOSITIONS
Z
The air inside the plush, wood-paneled conference room on the tenth floor of the downtown legal building was suffocatingly hot, despite the air conditioning humming overhead.
I sat at a long mahogany table, clutching a cheap plastic pen. Beside me was Marcus, a young legal aid attorney provided through a local community outreach program. He was smart, but he looked like he had graduated law school three weeks ago, his suit jacket slightly too large around his shoulders.
Across the table sat Valerie, wearing an impeccably tailored cream-colored dress, flanked by two attorneys in three-piece suits from the highest-priced firm in the county. Her chief attorney, a slick man named Richard Vance (no relation to me, thank God), leaned back in his leather chair with a smug smile.
"Let the record reflect," Vance began, gesturing to the court reporter tapping away in the corner, "that we are commencing the preliminary deposition regarding the emergency injunction against Ms. Samantha Vance."
"This entire filing is absurd," Marcus spoke up, though his voice lacked the booming authority of Valerie's lawyer. "My client inherits a modest property from her deceased father, moves in peaceably, and within two weeks she is bombarded with municipal fines, private surveillance, and now a civil lawsuit attempting to force her out."
Valerie scoffed softly, picking a piece of lint off her sleeve. "Peaceably? Mr. Legal Aid, that property is a hazard to public health. The vehicle parked on that lot leaks oil into the water table that feeds into the lake! Not to mention the structural safety issues—"
"You installed surveillance cameras pointing directly into my eight-year-old daughter's bedroom window!" I blurted out, unable to contain the anger boiling inside me any longer.
Marcus placed a hand on my arm. "Samantha, let me—"
"No, Marcus!" I turned my eyes onto Valerie, staring her down. "You set up hidden cameras in your rose bushes. You called tow trucks under false pretenses. You have harassed my child and me from the very second we stepped foot on that grass. Why? Because my car isn't expensive enough for you? Because I don't wear thousand-dollar suits?"
Valerie didn't flinch. Instead, her mouth curved into a slow, cold smile.
"You want to talk about class, Samantha?" Valerie leaned forward across the polished table, her eyes glinting like ice. "Let's talk about reality. That house was a dump when your alcoholic father lived there, and it’s a dump now. I spent twenty years turning this lakefront into an elite, high-value community. I will not let a penniless single mother lower my property value by two hundred thousand dollars because she thinks she’s entitled to a sob story."
"My father was not an alcoholic," I snapped, my voice cracking. "He was a veteran who served his country!"
"He was a loser who left you nothing but a collapsing shack," Valerie sneered softly. "And you can't even afford to fix the porch. How are you going to pay my legal fees when the judge grants this injunction? Because I assure you, I will enforce every single dime of that judgment. I will garnish your meager wages until you have nothing left."
Marcus stood up abruptly. "We are taking a ten-minute recess. My client needs air."
"Take all the air you want," Valerie’s lawyer, Vance, said smoothly, shuffling his papers. "You have forty-eight hours to accept our settlement offer. Vacate the property, sign the deed over to Mrs. Montgomery for the tax-appraised value of fifty thousand dollars, and we drop all claims and legal fees."
Fifty thousand dollars. The land alone was worth at least four hundred thousand. She wasn't just trying to drive me out—she was trying to steal my father's legacy for pennies on the dollar.
I walked out into the carpeted hallway, my heart pounding in my ears. I leaned against the cold glass wall overlooking the city, fighting back tears of absolute desperation. They had endless money. I had nothing.
Then my phone buzzed in my purse.
It was a text message from Harold.
Check your email right now. Olivia and I found something in the old shed.
I quickly opened my email app. Attached was a scanned PDF of a dusty, hand-drawn map from 1978, along with a recent photograph of Valerie's grand Mediterranean villa.
Below the photo, Harold had typed a short note:
Your dad didn't just keep notes on her local code violations, Samantha. Look at the foundation of her guest house and her stone retaining wall. She built them thirty years ago when your dad was deployed.
I zoomed in on the scanned map, reading the old red-ink notes written in my father's distinct handwriting. My jaw slowly dropped.
Valerie hadn't just built her wall three feet into the public easement. Her entire three-story guest house and luxury swimming pool were built over an active county drainage easement and extended four full feet onto my dad's property line.
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She didn't want me gone because of my car.
She wanted me gone because if anyone ever conducted a formal property survey, her multi-million dollar house would be declared an illegal encroachment subject to mandatory demolition.
