The next morning, Chloe and I walked into Arthur Pendelton’s Denver appraisal office. The reception area was sterile, decorated with framed photos of local real estate. A cheerful blonde receptionist looked up, smiling.
“Do you have an appointment?” she asked.
“No,” Chloe said, her voice steady. “But Mr. Pendelton will want to see us. It’s about his notarizations for Julian Drake.”
The receptionist’s smile vanished. Her eyes darted nervously towards a closed door behind her.
A moment later, Arthur Pendelton himself emerged from that door. He was a portly man in his early fifties, with thinning grey hair and a perpetually harried expression. His eyes widened when he saw Chloe.
“Chloe Albright,” he said, his voice flat, devoid of its earlier warmth. “What a surprise.”
He looked at me, then back at Chloe. His face was a mask of practiced indifference, but a bead of sweat trickled down his temple.
“We need to talk about these, Mr. Pendelton,” I said, holding up the bank statement showing the $15,000 kickback to him, along with a copy of the forged deed.
His eyes flickered to the documents. The composure he had maintained for years began to crack.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he stammered, his voice losing its professional edge. “Those are private matters.”
“Fifteen thousand dollars, Mr. Pendelton,” Chloe interjected, her voice firm. “To validate forged signatures on my father’s estate. And now on Maya’s mother’s estate.”
Pendelton’s face flushed crimson. He looked around the empty waiting room, then back at us, his eyes darting. His professionalism had completely evaporated.
“Get out!” he hissed, his voice rising. “This is harassment! I’ll call the police!”
He turned and practically bolted back into his office, slamming the door shut behind him. We heard the sharp click of the lock.
“He’s panicking,” Chloe said, a grim satisfaction in her voice. “That means we hit a nerve.”
But our brief victory was short-lived.
Less than two hours later, as we were driving to the Denver Police Department, my phone buzzed with another alert. It was a new legal notification.
This one was from the Denver County Court. It was an emergency filing.
“Order for Emergency Legal Lien and Asset Freeze,” the subject line read.
I pulled over to the side of the road, my hands shaking as I opened the document. My eyes scanned the legalese, searching for Julian’s name.
There it was. Julian Drake had filed an emergency legal lien against Eleanor’s $300,000 Denver home.
But the reason he cited sent a fresh wave of nausea through me.
He claimed I was “mentally unstable due to unresolved grief.” He stated I was “unfit to manage my mother’s property assets” and that I was “suffering from severe delusions, making irrational financial decisions.”
He was using my grief, my mother’s death, against me. He was painting me as crazy, to seize control of everything. Pendelton must have called him the second we left his office. This was Julian’s swift, brutal retaliation. He was cornered, and he was fighting back with everything he had.
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