CHAPTER 3: The Erasure of the Parasites
The extraction was swift, legal, and absolute. Because Maya had the foresight to document the physical evidence and the immediate aftermath of the assault on her phone, the officers didn't hesitate. Eric was handcuffed in the center of the living room he had spent a year freeloading in, his arms pinned behind his back as his parents wailed about the "family reputation."
"You're making a catastrophic mistake, Maya!" Eric yelled, his voice echoing down the stairwell as the officers escorted him toward the patrol car. "You have nothing without us! You'll be entirely alone in this apartment!"
"I’ve been alone for eighteen months, Eric," Maya whispered to the empty hallway. "I'm just finally cleaning up the trash."
The moment the door clicked shut behind the police detail, leaving the apartment echoing with an exquisite, heavy silence, Maya didn't breakdown. She walked straight into her home office, unlocked the bottom filing cabinet, and pulled out a manila folder she had been quietly compiling for three weeks. Inside was a fully drafted petition for divorce, an asset protection injunction, and a forensic audit of Eric’s hidden bank accounts—revealing he had been secretly filtering her mortgage money to fund his parents' luxury retirement condo in Arizona.
She picked up her phone and dialed her family attorney.
May you like
"Marcus," Maya said, watching the steam completely vanish from the cold soup on the kitchen floor. "The contingency plan just went live. File the emergency ex-parte motion for exclusive possession of the marital residence. And tell the process servers they can find Eric at the county jail."
"Consider it done, Maya," the attorney replied. "By tomorrow at noon, he won’t be allowed within five hundred feet of your perimeter."
