Chapter 17
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The eviction was brutal, swift, and completely merciless. At exactly 8:00 AM on the deadline day, the bank's repossession team arrived at the Vance mansion accompanied by local law enforcement. Cassandra stood on the front lawn with two small suitcases, watching in absolute devastation as workers changed the locks on the heavy oak doors.
She watched strangers carry out her expensive artwork, her custom furniture, and her sprawling wardrobe of designer gowns to be auctioned off to cover her husband's massive debts.
She was completely alone. Her socialite friends had blocked her numbers. Her family, terrified of drawing the wrath of Alexander Sterling, refused to wire her a single dime. Even her former housekeeper, a woman Cassandra had verbally abused for a decade, walked past her without offering a single word of comfort.
With her suitcases in hand, Cassandra walked to the nearest bus stop. It was the first time in her forty-two years of life that she had ever taken public transportation. She sat on the hard plastic bench, shivering in the brisk autumn wind, clutching her purse tightly to her chest.
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She found a cheap, cramped motel room on the outskirts of the city, paying for a week's stay with the very last few hundred dollars she had secretly stashed in her handbag. The room smelled of old smoke and mildew. She sat on the lumpy mattress, staring at the peeling wallpaper, and wept until she had absolutely no tears left.
The reality of her new existence was a crushing, suffocating weight. She had fallen from the absolute pinnacle of high society to the very bottom of the working class in a matter of days. There were no more galas, no more champagne, and no more power. She was entirely stripped of the armor of her wealth, left exposed to a world she had spent her life mocking.
