I hung up the phone. By the time the afternoon sun cast long shadows over the city, the illusion of Benjamin Hawthorne was dead.

The locks were drilled and replaced. The house staff, paid by my company, were dismissed with generous bonuses.

But the house was only the first domino. Because a fake king cannot survive without his castle, and Benjamin had built his entire identity on a foundation of sand.

Once the truth of the eviction came out, the rest of his life began a spectacular, unstoppable collapse. And he had no idea that the worst was yet to come.

Benjamin had been using that mansion for more than just parties. He had been using it to leverage his image.

He brought potential investors there, implying it was his personal asset, building a facade of immense personal wealth to secure loans for his own side projects. Without the house, the facade evaporated.

By Wednesday morning, word had spread through our social and business circles. The Vice President had been fired and evicted by his own mother on the same day.

The investors pulled out. The bank called in the loans he had secured using his company title.

And Penelope? Penelope was a parasite who only attached herself to healthy hosts.

The moment the black cards were declined and she found herself standing on the sidewalk with designer luggage and no mansion to put it in, her loyalty evaporated. She left him before the sun set on Thursday, taking whatever jewelry she could carry.

On Friday night, a torrential rainstorm hit the city. At 9:00 PM, the buzzer to my private, secure penthouse apartment rang.

I walked to the intercom screen. Benjamin stood in the rain, drenched, looking disheveled, frantic, and wild. I buzzed him up, because I wanted to look him in the eye.

When I opened my front door, he stormed into the foyer, dripping water onto the marble. The smell of cheap alcohol clung to him.

“What is wrong with you?” he demanded, pointing a shaking finger at me. “You ruined my life.”

“Penelope left me, the bank froze my personal accounts, and my friends will not even answer my calls,” he shouted.

I stood there, wearing a simple gray sweater, my face still slightly bruised, looking at the wreckage of the man I had raised.

“You hit me thirty times,” I said, my voice a quiet, unwavering baseline against his hysterical shouting. “In front of an audience, and you think I am the problem?”

“You provoked me!” he yelled, desperate to maintain his victimhood. “You embarrassed me in front of everyone and you gave me trash.”

That was the moment the last, lingering ember of maternal hope inside me finally died for good. He felt no remorse; he only felt sorry for the consequences he was facing.

“What do you want, Benjamin?” I asked coldly.

“I want my life back!” he spat. “I want the money you owe me for the years I worked for your company and I want my house.”

I stepped closer to him. The sheer force of my presence made him take a step back.