I was the daughter who paid the $1,845 mortgage every month, yet my parents told me to become independent while my 35-year-old brother lived rent-free—then, less than 24 hours after I left, I discovered they’d already given away my bedroom while still expecting me to fund their house. / Chapter 78 / 90

Chapter 78 - The Purge Cycle

The garage was in shambles. Thick plumes of cooling steam drifted through the collapsed ceiling rafters, mingling with the falling snow outside.

Arthur Vance, having managed to cut his zip-ties using a shard of glass from the shattered garage window, stood near the doorway, holding a heavy tire iron. When he saw the hatch of the survival capsule blow open and Cassidy emerge supporting the frail, white-haired figure of Richard Vance, Arthur dropped the iron, tears instantly welling in his eyes.

"Uncle Richard..." Arthur choked out, rushing forward to take the old man’s other side.

"Hello, Arthur," Richard rasped, his voice weak but filled with immense warmth. "You grew up looking just like your father."

Outside, Donald Vance was backed up against the hood of a state trooper's cruiser, his hands cuffed behind his back, his face streaked with soot and tears of self-pity. "Officer, you don't understand! She blew the industrial line! She tried to murder us all! She's an unstable squatter who refused to leave our property!"

A sharp, authoritative voice cut through Donald's hysterics. "Shut your mouth, Donald."

Detective Miller of the State Police Special Investigations Unit—accompanied by federal marshals who had been tracking the Cross-Continental corporate fraud files Cassidy had submitted earlier that week—stepped past the cruisers, his eyes wide as he looked at the surviving patriarch of the Vance family emerging from the garage.

Eleanor Vance stood on the porch steps, shivering in her ruined coat. When her eyes met the gaze of the husband she had left for dead thirty years ago, her knees gave out. She collapsed onto the cold wooden planks of the porch, clutching the porch rail, unable to speak, unable to look away.

"Richard..." Eleanor whimpered, her voice barely a thread in the winter air. "You... you were supposed to stay down there..."

Richard Vance stopped at the base of the porch steps, leaning on Cassidy and Arthur. He looked up at his wife with neither anger nor hatred—only a profound, devastating disgust.

"You took my life, Eleanor," Richard said, his deep voice carrying clearly over the idling police engines. "You tried to take my daughter's future. You turned our son into a spineless, greedy monster who couldn't even set an explosive charge without running from the steam. It's over."

Cassidy stepped forward, pulling the heavy steel cylinder key and the original 1991 Boreas Trust Deed from her tactical vest. She handed them directly to the lead federal marshal.

"My name is Cassidy Vance," she declared, her voice ringing clear across the snow-covered grounds of Ridge Road. "I am the sole surviving trustee and primary equity holder of the Vance Estate, purchased through one hundred and forty-four consecutive verified monthly payments of $1,845. I am formally revoking the residency privileges of Eleanor Vance and Donald Vance. I am pressing charges for attempted murder, unlawful imprisonment, treasonous exploitation of federal reserves, and grand larceny."

Donald began to thrash against the police cruiser, screaming profanities at his sister, his face purple with rage. "You bitch! You ruined this family! That was my house! That was my inheritance!"

"You never earned a single brick of this house, Donald," Cassidy said, turning her back on him completely. "Take him away."

The troopers shoved Donald into the back of the cruiser, slamming the door on his screams. Two female marshals walked up the porch steps, lifting a weeping Eleanor to her feet and escorting her down the walkway in handcuffs.