Returning home to surprise her elderly parents, a twenty-one-year-old self-made student finds them evicted on the street by their predatory landlord, pulling her secret underworld strings to destro...
The fluorescent hum of the extended-stay hotel room felt sterile after the chaos of Elm Street. My parents, Arthur and Martha, sat on the edge of one of the twin beds, their faces still etched with the shock of the past hours. I’d driven them straight here, the cheapest place with two beds and a kitchenette I could find outside the city limits.
“It’s temporary,” I told them, arranging the few clean clothes I’d packed from my dorm bag into a small drawer. “Just until we figure things out.”
My mother picked at a loose thread on the blanket. “He said… he said we forgot the rent.” Her voice was a wisp. “My memory isn’t what it used to be, Arthur.”
My father just stared at the beige wall, his hands clasped so tightly his knuckles were white. He looked smaller, frail. The image of them shivering on the curb kept replaying in my mind.
I knelt in front of them, taking my mother’s cold hands. “You didn’t forget anything, Mom. Julian Solloway did this on purpose.”
I moved to the small table, my laptop already open, humming to life. The first thing was to stabilize them, then to dig. I started with local real estate forums, the kind where small-time landlords and tenants alike vented and warned. My fingers flew across the keyboard.
Canton Ohio landlords. Julian Solloway. Eviction.
The results came back quickly, a familiar pattern emerging from the digital chatter. Thread after thread popped up, spanning back two years, hinting at similar situations. A young woman complaining her elderly aunt was suddenly “forgetting” payment dates for a Julian Solloway property. Another describing how their aging parents were being “gaslit” into believing they were suffering from dementia.
The word jumped out at me. Gaslit.
It wasn’t just my parents. Julian had a history. He systematically targeted vulnerable tenants, playing on their fears of declining mental acuity, convincing them they were losing their minds, all to manufacture non-payment records. My stomach turned with a cold, hard certainty. This wasn’t a mistake or an oversight. This was a calculated, cruel strategy. Julian Solloway wasn’t just a predatory landlord; he was a psychological predator.
My mother coughed softly from the bed. “Is everything alright, honey?”
I didn’t turn, my eyes glued to the screen. “Everything’s going to be fine, Mom.”
But the image of my father’s vacant stare, and my mother’s whispered fear of memory loss, twisted in my gut. He hadn’t just evicted them. He’d tried to break their minds first.
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