Chapter 5 - Shattered Glass
The following week, the inevitable implosion occurred.
It wasn't a private family matter anymore; it was public spectacle. Daniel was officially arrested on charges of wire fraud and embezzlement related to his startup. The police picked him up at the budget apartment he had rented after Vanessa abruptly left him.
The news hit the local business journals. Prominent Tech Founder Accused of Defrauding Investors.
Vanessa had filed for divorce the moment the FBI showed up. She immediately embarked on a PR campaign among her wealthy friends, painting herself as the naive, victimized wife of a con artist. She moved back in with her parents, aggressively distancing herself from the man she had sworn to love for richer or poorer.
Clearly, she had only meant the 'richer' part.
I was summoned to the district attorney's office to give my statement regarding the forged real estate documents. The detective on the case, a weary-looking man named Hodges, slid the printed application across the table.
"Mrs. Sterling, your son claims you gave him verbal permission to initiate this loan process on your behalf, and that he only signed it because you were out of town and he had a deadline."
I looked at the document. "I was not out of town. I was upstairs in my bedroom. And I spent twenty-seven years as a real estate attorney, Detective. I would never authorize a six-hundred-thousand-dollar lien on my primary residence without a notarized power of attorney."
Hodges nodded slowly, writing in his notepad. "He's looking at significant time, Mrs. Sterling. Your testimony on the forgery charge will likely be the final nail in the coffin, given the federal charges already piling up. Are you prepared to testify against your son?"
I looked out the window of the precinct. The sky was clear and painfully blue.
"Yes," I said.
When I left the station, a small crowd of reporters was lingering outside, hungry for details on the disgraced tech bro. I pulled my coat tightly around me, keeping my head high, refusing to give them a single photograph of a broken mother.
That evening, I poured myself a glass of red wine and walked through my quiet, secure house. I stopped by the crystal bowl Vanessa had slammed onto the counter weeks ago. There was a tiny, almost imperceptible hairline fracture in the glass.
May you like
I picked it up and walked to the garbage bin.
I dropped it in. It shattered loudly, breaking into a hundred irreparable pieces. It was loud, violent, and incredibly satisfying. There was no fixing what was broken, and pretending otherwise was just a waste of time.
