My neighbor warned me, ‘Stop throwing parties at your house every night. Enough is enough.’

A Midnight Awakening

“Emily Turner, how long do you plan to keep this chaos going, huh? Enough is enough!”

At 2:00 a.m., startled awake by the furious shouting that exploded right next to my ear, I bolted upright in bed, still half-conscious and disoriented. I glanced at my smartphone screen, and the caller ID read Daniel Brooks.

He was the neighbor of the Laguna Beach vacation home I had purchased just a few weeks earlier. “Mr. Brooks, I’m very sorry, but what are you talking about? I’m at my primary residence in the city right now.” I replied.

“Don’t play dumb! There are about ten young people partying at your house right now, blasting loud music and drinking like there’s no tomorrow!” He shouted.

“It’s so noisy we can’t live our peaceful lives! What do you think the quiet of a residential neighborhood is supposed to mean?” His voice was trembling with rage. That quiet street in Laguna Beach was home to many wealthy retirees.

He had seemed genuinely pleased when I told him I would be buying a house there. “A party at my place?” I asked.

“That’s right! The street is completely jammed with flashy sports cars, and those kids are even splashing alcohol all over the hedges in my garden!” He continued.

“I’m this close to calling the police! No, I already am! If you don’t put an end to this hell within thirty minutes, don’t think you’ll get away with it either!” The call was cut off unilaterally.

The Camera Reveals the Truth

My heart began pounding violently deep inside my ears. That was impossible. That house was something I had finally obtained after running three Italian restaurants day and night without rest for ten long years.

I had just moved in furniture and completely replaced every interior detail with brand new fittings in preparation for the official move next week. There shouldn’t have been anyone there at all. With trembling hands, I launched the home security app.

The front entrance, the living room, and the spacious terrace with its sweeping ocean view were all equipped with the latest security cameras. The few seconds it took for the footage to load felt like an eternity. When the scene finally appeared on the screen, I sucked in a sharp breath.

There they were: young people jumping onto the pristine white Italian leather sofa I had carefully chosen, with their shoes still on, spraying champagne at each other using expensive crystal glasses. Hip-hop music thundered at an earsplitting volume. In the terrace jacuzzi, unfamiliar men were diving in wearing nothing but their underwear.

And right at the center of it all, I finally got it. “This is my new stage in life!” The one shouting that while chugging straight from a vintage wine bottle that had been prepared for me was my younger sister, Amanda.

The glowing screen of my smartphone turned my entire world into hell. The living room, which should have been gleaming white while filled with the California sea breeze, had now been reduced to the wreckage of a cheap nightclub.

The first thing that caught my eye was the custom-made kitchen counter imported directly from Italy. The protective film I had been looking forward to peeling off myself was cruelly torn away. The stripped film had been crumpled up and tossed onto the floor like trash.

Right on top of it, someone had spread out pizza boxes and was spilling cocktails with greasy, oil-soaked fingers. If only the film had still been there, it might have been salvageable, but watching stains spread across the exposed stone made me feel like I was about to lose my mind.

“Look at this! Isn’t it amazing?” I could see one of Amanda’s hangers-on had even wandered into my bedroom. Across the casino bed that no one had ever laid down on, not even once, and its pure white linens, the three French bulldogs Amanda owned were running around with muddy paws.

The dogs barked excitedly, and one of them viciously tore into my custom-made curtains with its teeth. I felt something sour rise up from the pit of my stomach. This white stone villa in Laguna Beach was my life itself.

The Cost of Entitlement

In my twenties, I started out washing dishes at a small Italian restaurant in Manhattan Beach with hands covered in burns, kneading pasta late into the night. I worked every single day without rest until I became the owner of three restaurants.

On the screen, Amanda was waving a selfie stick around and shouting at her Instagram Live stream. “Everyone, my villa is finally finished! Buying a beachfront mansion at twenty-nine is basically proof of my talent, right?” She boasted.

“The life of a successful person is way more comfortable than I imagined!” She casually yanked the cork out of a vintage wine bottle that cost $3,000 and that I hadn’t even taken a single sip from yet. Then, unbelievably, she started dancing while splashing it all over the terrace.

“My sister, oh, Emily is probably buried in the smell of garlic in some restaurant kitchen right now! This kind of refined lifestyle just doesn’t suit her!” She continued.

“This house belongs to someone glamorous like me!” In response to her words, her entourage burst into vulgar laughter. What they were trampling underfoot was the oak hardwood flooring I had spent hours polishing by hand.

This wasn’t just a party; this was a violation of my soul. The latest security system was recording every second of this catastrophe to the cloud without missing a single moment. With trembling hands, I pressed the save button, methodically securing the evidence.

I can’t believe this. The camera’s gaze shifted to the kitchen. It was the symbol of my pride, a space that held my dreams as a chef, equipped with professional-grade ovens and refrigerators.

But that place had now been turned into a garbage dump. Amanda and her friends had pulled out the finest caviar and a custom cheese set from the refrigerator, the very things I had been looking forward to opening alone on the first night after moving in.

“Look at this! Emily was hiding stuff this expensive, trying to keep it all to herself! What a cheap older sister!” Laughing, Amanda scooped the caviar directly with a silver spoon and brought it to her mouth. The rest of it, unbelievably, was dumped straight onto the floor.

The dogs competed to lick it up, and a raw, fishy stain spread across the marble flooring. Amanda, I won’t forgive this. Tonight, I’m going to crush that shallow fantasy of yours completely without mercy.

The Road to Laguna

I grabbed my iPhone and dialed 911. “Yes, this is 911. Is this an emergency?” The operator’s calm voice echoed in my ear.

Gripping the steering wheel with trembling hands, I pulled my Audi onto the highway heading toward Laguna Beach. “More than ten intruders have broken onto my private property on Lakeshore Drive in Laguna Beach and are destroying my belongings!” I informed them.

“I am on my way there now. My name is Emily Turner. I have the deed and all legal documents. Please dispatch the police immediately!” I ended the call and glanced at the iPhone fixed into the dashboard holder.

On the screen, the madness was still raging as I drove eighty miles per hour down the highway in the dead of night. As I stared at the lights streaming past outside the window, the hellish ten years it took to obtain that house flashed through my mind.

The days I washed dishes at a cheap restaurant in New York until grease seeped under my fingernails. When I opened my first independent restaurant, I gave up my apartment just to pay rent and slept wrapped in a sleeping bag in the back room of the shop.

The sensation of boiling pasta in a stifling summer kitchen without air conditioning, on the verge of collapsing from heat exhaustion, is still burned into my skin. Meanwhile, what about my younger sister Amanda? She bragged about having talent, burned through our parents’ money, and whenever she ran short, she came crying to me.

“Emily, you’re successful anyway! Helping your little sister is only natural, right?” That was her favorite line. But that night, she crossed the final line.

Not only did she beg for money, she turned that house—the place I built so I could sleep undisturbed listening only to the sound of the waves—into a toy to satisfy her own vanity. The eyes staring back at me in the rearview mirror were colder and more fixed than I had ever seen before.

My anger completed its circuit and transformed into an icy calm. As a restaurant owner, I had resolved countless problems: embezzling managers, drunken violent customers. Each time, I fought with evidence and logic and survived.

Amanda, you seem to think of me as nothing more than a dull, overly serious older sister. But you still don’t know how ruthless a business owner can truly be. In the distance, I could see the highest ridgeline of Laguna Beach and the dark boundary where it met the ocean.

I will calculate the price you owe for defiling my castle down to the very last cent. And then, I will present you with the bill of your life.