Chapter 21: Going Once

Drake stood at the back of the courthouse square with his hands in his coat pockets and watched the Pellhams' life go under the hammer.

The auction was on the pavement, because the house had been too small to hold the crowd.

Eight hundred people had come.

Some wanted a bargain, and some wanted to say they had been there.

A man held up a signed photograph of Dean in a white tuxedo.

"Do I hear fifty dollars?" the auctioneer said. "Thirty? Ten?"

Nobody spoke.

"Five?"

A teenager raised a hand and laughed.

"Sold," the auctioneer said, and the crowd cheered.

Behind the table, two men in gray moving-company vests were loading furniture onto a flatbed.

One of them was Dean.

He lifted a mahogany dining chair onto the truck, his burned hand in a thick glove, and did not look up when the crowd began to film him.

The other was Quinton.

He carried a lamp in both arms and walked with his eyes on his own shoes.

A third man, Demi's other brother, the quiet one who worked in logistics, drove the truck.

Drake felt no pleasure in it.

He had expected to.

Instead he felt the plain, tired satisfaction of a ledger balancing.

The house went for two hundred and ten thousand dollars less than the bank wanted.

The father stood on the sidewalk with his wife, and when the hammer fell, he put his hat on and walked away without a word.

Her mother stayed where she was.

She looked at the empty windows, and then across the square at the courthouse steps.

A line of cameras waited there.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The True Heiress's Revenge: Exposing My Toxic Family on Live TV from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.