The morning sun hadn’t even cleared the horizon when my phone buzzed with the notification I’d been waiting for. A smirk tugged at my lips as I opened the email from Wagner’s legal team. The subject line read:
Urgent.
Payment due immediately. Legal action pending. I forwarded it to my mother without reading it first.
She deserved the raw, unfiltered shock. Twenty minutes later, my phone exploded with calls. I declined every single one, watching the screen light up like a Christmas tree.
Mom. Dad. Mom again.
Lillian’s number, probably from jail. Mom. An unknown number that was definitely Mom using someone else’s phone.
Finally, a text from my father broke through. Sloane, please. Your mother is hysterical.
What is this bill? I typed back:
Read it carefully. Especially the part about who signed the liability waiver.
By noon, I’d received a seventeen-paragraph email from my mother that oscillated wildly between rage, denial, and desperate bargaining. I deleted it after the first sentence. How could you do this to your own mother?
The irony was almost beautiful. The woman who’d locked me out of a bedroom I’d paid for was now asking me how I could. The actual invoice arrived as an attachment in my father’s next email.
I opened it with the same clinical detachment a surgeon might use to examine an X-ray. Elite Stays Luxury Rentals. Final Invoice.
Property: The Iron Palace, Malibu Coast. Reservation Holder: Sloane Barrett. Liable Party: Per-signed agreement, Camilla Barrett.
Itemized charges:
Property Damage and Consumption. Consumed and spilled wine: 5.5 bottles of 1996 Château Margaux at $4,000 each — $22,000. Persian rug replacement: irreparable wine stain, 18th-century Tabriz — $22,000.
Subtotal, property damage: $44,000. Restoration and cleanup. Special cleaning services, emergency call-out — $8,000.
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