My name is Lori Conrad and I am the former defending secretary in a legal battle with a wealthy San Francisco mogul, Franklin J. Thorne. In my family, wealth was not something everyone could come by, we earned our living from working hard at jobs that had nothing to do with wealth. My father raked the yard for a wealthy family on a weekly basis, my mother cleaned the bathroom of a wealthy woman every morning before heading off to work her cleaning job at a local business. My brother, John, worked at the local park cleaning the bathrooms when he wasn't in college.
Everyone in our family worked hard for the money that they had. We were not poor in our town. We lived in an average house, nothing extravagant. When it came time for college, my brother was sent to a state school, while I opted to go to a private university.
For my parents, my college fund was wisely spent on my education. They knew it would pay off in the end. The day that I was accepted to the prestigious university was one of the proudest days of their lives, at least my mother's. My father was never the type to get all teary eyed about emotional gestures. His usual show of affection was a small bear hug that I instantly found to be very unimpressive, yet strangely comforting.
It was the life we led.
After I graduated college, I got a job with a low paying firm that helped people with their legal troubles. Even though our jobs were in high demand, we were paid very little for the work that we did.
I didn't mind that I was offered a very low paying job, as did the rest of my family. My family as a whole, unlike the wealthy mobs of the city, had no large household. We didn't have maids or house any type of staff. My parents were small time business owners of a small restaurant in the city. My brother was still in college. My grandparents owned a small shop on the corner of the block in front of the restaurant. My best friend of twenty years worked in the restaurant and was the only person who could cook like my mother would.
The Thorne family was a bit more wealthy than my family. They lived in a huge mansion in the posh part of town. All the people who lived in the neighborhoods surrounding this wealthy family were very rich as well. They had maids to clean their house and drivers to get them around town. I never had a driver, I did everything that I could to get by without the use of someone who hauled me to work every day.
That was just the way my life was. Everyone in our poor family had jobs which helped them survive, and the wealthy had servants to do it for them.
Even though we took the same college classes, we had very different lives. Most of the time we could all be seen laughing and enjoying our time together. Sometimes Aunt Bella would join us and the three of us would talk about nothing for hours. Those were our favorite times and we would like to think that we were the type of family to always have the time to talk to each other.
My parents were very loving towards us, even though they seemed to have very little time to spend with us. When we were older we all were able to have long lasting and deep meaningful relationships. Our parents had gotten married with the expectation that we would all still be living with them. How wrong can you be?
When I was seventeen they had gotten married and even though all the children expected to all live together, it never happened. Aunt Bella and John moved out of their parent's house and went their separate ways to live a life of their own. My brother left for college, while I left for the business world after graduating from college. I had been working for less pay for less pay for two years before my firm was purchased by the Thorne family. Originally I had no intentions on working with the Thorne family, as they were the biggest rival of my firm. However, the person I work for was a very close friend of the former owners of the firm.
The Thorne family had been harassing my firm for the past two years, causing them to lose valuable clients. One night, likely out of desperation than anything else, my superiors had the idea to pay off the Thorne family to leave us alone. They offered a million dollars to pay off half of the price of the firm, which was extremely cheap. The offer was accepted immediately by the Thorne family.
After the Thorne family had taken over the firm, everyone started to lose their jobs. The Thorne family was not paying out their end of the deal, so the remainder of the money had to be picked up by my firm. Additionally, the pension was lost, which had been my family's only source of income. My family had enough though, so since I never had children, my parents bought me an apartment in town, the apartment my parents had been selling since they got married.
After I had moved in, it was only then that I realized that I had been hoodwinked by the Thorne family. How could I have been so blind? Aunt Bella had had a death sentence in the family and when she found out that she would have to move out of her childhood home, she was beside herself. What finally brought the family to where it was today was the fact that the remaining family members had no money to live on.
My family, Aunt Bella, John, and myself, were all relatively wealthy, but we weren't the type of wealthy family to spend all of our money. What we spent our money on was to pay off our debts. In the case of the Thorne family, we had spent all of our money paying of our debts and had very little left. Family members had to sell their homes to make up for the money that was owed to the Thorne family. Aunt Bella and I could have moved to a smaller place, but why would we do that? We had always stayed in the same place for as long as we could remember. It was the only place we had ever called home.
Trust me when I tell you that Aunt Bella, John, and I could not be happier to have been left alone in our home. We never had to worry about someone being held up at gun point, no one here was a threat to our safety. The only reason that I was paying out my family a visit at the home of my former employees was because one of the family members still owed my firm for the rest of our money owed.
My friend Haley couldn't pay the Thorne's back, so she was asked to come home with me for a visit. When she got home, I realized that her presence wasn't just a guise to get her to come see this house of horrors.