David finally looked at her. The expression on his face wasn't anger. It was pity.
“Mrs. Vance,” David said softly. “You are alleging that my guest assaulted you, and you are currently employing that man—” he pointed at Vince—“to remove my guest’s seventy-thousand-dollar vehicle from my private driveway without my consent.”
“Your consent doesn't matter!” Susan spat. “I am the President of the HOA! My authority supersedes yours!”
Sergeant Miller sighed, looking like a man who dealt with wealthy neighborhood disputes every day of his life. He turned to Susan and pulled a formal document from his vest pocket—a sworn witness statement form.
“Ma’am,” Miller said, his tone turning highly official. “If you are alleging an assault, I need you to put it in writing. Be advised, providing a false statement to law enforcement regarding a crime is a criminal offense.”
Tyler scoffed, leaning over his mother’s shoulder. “Write it, Mom. Put this loser away.”
Susan grabbed the pen from Miller’s hand with terrifying enthusiasm. She pressed the paper against her clipboard and began writing furiously.
I watched the ink dry on her lies. She was documenting that I had physically threatened her. She was documenting that the tow was justified due to my "aggression." She was sealing her own fate.
“Are you sure you want to sign that, Susan?” David asked, his voice suddenly cutting through the heavy afternoon heat like a scalpel. “Once your signature touches the bottom of that page, the legal mechanisms of this county will not care about your HOA title.”
Susan glared at him, her eyes burning with pure malice.
“I’m the President of Oakmont,” she hissed. “I make the rules here.”
She slashed her signature across the bottom of the page with a flourish and shoved it back into Sergeant Miller’s chest.
“Arrest him,” she ordered the cops. She pointed to Vince. “And hook up the truck, Tyler wants the keys.”
Vince ducked under my front bumper, the heavy steel hook clanking against the frame of my truck. Tyler pulled out his phone, already taking a picture of my truck for his social media.
They thought they had won. They thought I was going to be thrown in the back of a cruiser while they drove away in the truck I had built with my bare hands.