Natalie. We’ve lived here for two years. This is our home. Mom let us stay here, so you have no legal right to kick us out on the spot.”
Julian smirked, stepping beside Kloe like they were a united front now, some kind of team facing down an unreasonable outsider. “She’s right. Texas property law protects established residents. You can’t just throw us out without a formal thirty-day eviction notice. So why don’t you calm down? Go check into a hotel and we can discuss this like adults tomorrow.”
They thought they had me trapped in a legal web. They thought my long absence, my years spent overseas, my exhaustion after a transatlantic flight, made me powerless against their manipulation, easy to bully into backing down with a few confident-sounding phrases about tenant rights they clearly didn’t fully understand themselves.
They were dead wrong.
Instead of arguing, I looked at
