My Father Locked Me Out In -10°c Snow Because Of A Dry Turkey. My Billionaire Grandmother Just Arrived With A Security Team. Who Is Freezing Now?
A Breach of Contract
Gregory laughed.
It was a nervous, brittle sound.
“Contract? What are you talking about? This is my house. I discipline my daughter how I see fit.”
“That,”
Josephine said,
“is where you are mistaken.”
She gestured to Vance.
He placed the briefcase on the coffee table, right on top of a plate of untouched appetizers.
The sound of the latches snapping open echoed in the room like gunshots.
“You don’t own this house, Gregory,”
Josephine said softly.
“You never did.”
Gregory’s arrogance faltered.
“I have the deed. You signed it over to me ten years ago. It’s in the safe.”
“You have a piece of paper,”
Josephine corrected.
“You have a forgery that I allowed you to keep because it kept you quiet and out of my portfolio. But the ink on the real document dried twenty-six years ago.”
She pulled a single thick document from the briefcase and dropped it onto the table.
It didn’t look like a Christmas card; it looked like an eviction notice.
“Read the beneficiary line, Gregory.”
The First Female Heir
He picked it up.
His hands were shaking now.
I watched his eyes scan the legal text.
I watched the exact moment his world ended.
“This… this says…”
he stammered.
“It says the estate, the land, and the entire Harrison Holding Company were placed in a blind trust,”
Josephine said,
“to be transferred to the first female heir upon her twenty-sixth birthday.”
She turned to me.
“Happy birthday, Arya.”
The room spun.
I looked at my father.
He wasn’t looking at the document anymore.
He was looking at me, and for the first time in my life, I didn’t see the tyrant who controlled my allowance, my career choices, and my self-worth.
I saw a squatter.
“You,”
Gregory whispered, the venom returning to his voice.
“You knew. You planned this.”
“I knew nothing,”
I said, the realization washing over me like a warm tide.
“I thought I was broke. I thought I was homeless.”
Sabotage and Leverage
“You are,”
Patricia spat, standing up.
“This is ridiculous, Josephine. You can’t just give everything to her. She’s a failure. She crashed her own company. She can’t run an estate.”
“She didn’t crash her company,”
Josephine said coldly.
*”We tracked the short-selling on her stock, Patricia. We know Gregory used his leverage to spook her investors so she would come crawling back home.”
“He needed her here. He needed her under his thumb because he knew this day was coming.”
Josephine stepped closer to her son.
“You broke her leg so you could offer her a crutch, and then you kicked the crutch away in a blizzard.”
“I raised her!”
Gregory shouted, slamming his hand on the table.
“I put food on this table! This is my home!”
“This is not your home,”
Mr. Vance interjected, his voice bored and lethal.
“Technically, as of midnight, you are trespassing.”
Inherited Liability
“Trespassing?”
Gregory’s face turned purple.
“I am her father!”
“Biologically, yes,”
I said, stepping into the room.
I walked over to Reese, who shrank back into the sofa cushions.
I reached down and pulled my laptop from her hands.
She didn’t resist.
“But legally, you’re just a liability I inherited.”
I looked at the document on the table.
My name was there, printed in black ink.
It wasn’t just a house; it was freedom.
It was the capital I needed to restart my life.
It was the weapon I needed to end his.
“What do you want to do, Miss Harrison?”
Vance asked me.
He wasn’t asking Josephine; he was asking me.
The transfer of power was absolute.
I looked at Gregory.
He was panting, sweating, his eyes darting around the room looking for an angle, a lie, a way out.
He looked at me, and I saw him preparing to beg.
He was going to play the family card.
He was going to talk about blood and loyalty and all the things he had frozen out of me an hour ago.
“I want him out,”
I said.
Out into the Storm
“Now?”
Vance asked.
“The blizzard is getting worse!”
Patricia cried.
“You can’t throw us out in this!”
I looked at the window where I had stood shivering.
I looked at the heavy coat Josephine had draped over my shoulders.
“I don’t want them out tomorrow,”
I said, my voice dropping to a whisper that filled the room.
“I want them out now. And I want everything they own left behind. They leave with what they are wearing. Nothing else.”
Josephine smiled.
It was the proudest I had ever seen her.
“You heard the owner,”
she said to the security team.
“Clear the building.”
“Wait!”
Gregory lunged toward me.
“Arya, listen. We are family. You can’t do this. I was just trying to mold you. I was trying to make you tough.”
“You succeeded,”
I said.
The security guards moved in.
It wasn’t a polite escort; it was a removal.
They grabbed Gregory by his tuxedo jacket.
He screamed, kicking at the furniture as they dragged him toward the door.
Patricia was shrieking, clutching her pearls.
Reese followed them, looking at me with a mixture of terror and awe.
Welcome Home
The front door opened again.
The wind howled, hungry and waiting.
I watched my father being shoved out into the snow.
He stumbled, falling onto his knees in the drift where I had been standing.
He looked back at the house, at the warmth, at the light.
“Arya!”
he screamed.
“Open the door!”
I walked to the window.
I placed my hand against the cold glass.
I looked him in the eye, and then I reached for the curtain cord.
“Demolish,”
I whispered.
I pulled the cord.
The heavy velvet drapes slid shut, blotting out the sight of him, sealing the warmth inside, and leaving him in the cold he had built for me.
The room fell silent again.
The only sound was the crackling of the fire and the scratching of a pen as Mr. Vance prepared the final documents.
“Well,”
Josephine said, walking over to the bar and pouring herself a drink.
“That is how you handle a hostile takeover.”
She handed me the glass.
“Welcome home, Arya.”
