Chapter 10 - The Price of Arrogance
Forty-eight hours after the wedding that was meant to crush me, the Vance family’s world had ceased to exist.
In a cramped, fluorescent-lit bail-bond office near the Boston city jail, Eleanor Vance sat on a cracked vinyl chair.
She was clutching an empty paper coffee cup, her designer makeup long since washed away by tears of terror.
Beside her sat Fiona, shivering in a cheap gray hoodie she had purchased with their last twenty dollars from a gas station.
Her manicured nails were chipped down to the quick.
Across the scarred laminate counter, a heavy-set bondsman named Sal leaned back, chewing on an unlit cigar.
"Look, lady," Sal said, throwing a set of legal papers onto the counter with a loud slap.
"I don't care if your husband used to play golf with the governor."
"The charges against Aidan Vance include felony wire fraud, grand larceny, and corporate embezzlement."
"The judge set bail at two million dollars cash."
"Two million?" Eleanor shrieked, clutching her throat.
"We don't have two hundred dollars! Our house was seized! Our accounts are frozen!"
"Then your husband stays in the county lockup until his trial date in November," Sal said flatly, not even looking up from his computer screen.
"What about my fiancé?" Fiona demanded, lunging forward with desperate, red-rimmed eyes.
"Julian Sterling! His family is worth hundreds of millions! Just call the Sterling offices!"
Sal let out a harsh, mocking laugh that bounced off the dingy walls.
"The Sterlings?"
He pointed his fat thumb toward a small television hanging from the ceiling corner.
On the screen, a news anchor was standing outside the federal courthouse.
The ticker below read: Sterling Capital Liquidates Assets Following Montgomery Alliance Collapse: Julian Sterling Flees to London.
"Julian Sterling boarded an overnight flight out of Logan Airport four hours ago," Sal said, grinning with cruel amusement.
"His father released a public statement stating that the Sterling family has no connection whatsoever to the Vance family or their criminal enterprises."
"He threw you under the bus, sweetie."
Fiona stared at the television screen, her jaw hanging slack as her last shred of delusion shattered into dust.
"No... he loved me," she whimpered, sliding down the side of the counter to the dirty linoleum floor.
"He bought me a four-carat ring... we were going to Saint-Tropez..."
"The ring was leased, honey," Sal added, taking a puff of cold air through his cigar.
"The jewelers sent a repo man to my office this morning asking if I knew your whereabouts."
The door of the bail office swung open, and two plainclothes detectives stepped inside.
They looked around the dingy room until their eyes locked onto Eleanor and Fiona.
"Eleanor Vance? Fiona Vance?" the lead detective asked, pulling out his badge.
Eleanor looked up, her breath trembling with sudden dread.
"Yes? Are you here to help us?"
"You are both under arrest as material witnesses and co-conspirators in the Clara Vance trust fraud investigation," the detective stated calmly, pulling two sets of steel handcuffs from his belt.
"Wait! No! I am the bride!" Fiona screamed, kicking her legs as the female officer grabbed her wrists and pinned them behind her back.
"I didn't steal anything! My father handled the money!"
"You spent four hundred thousand dollars of stolen funds on private jets, designer clothes, and that wedding reception, Miss Vance," the officer said coldly, clicking the steel cuffs tightly around her delicate wrists.
"You signed the corporate expenditure vouchers."
"That makes you an active participant in interstate financial fraud."
The officers marched Eleanor and Fiona out through the glass door into the drizzling rain.
A swarm of news cameras flashed aggressively as the once-proud mother and daughter were pushed into the back of a police cruiser.
Across the street, parked discreetly beneath the autumn trees, sat Christian’s black luxury sedan.
I sat in the passenger seat, watching through the tinted glass as the police car pulled away with its sirens flashing.
There was no sorrow in my chest.
There was no guilt.
There was only the quiet, profound stillness of a long, dark debt finally being settled to the last penny.
Christian reached across the center console, gently covering my hand with his own.
"Are you ready to go home, Mabel?" he asked softly.
May you like
I turned away from the flashing red and blue lights and looked into the eyes of the man who had stood by me when the whole world was laughing.
"Yes," I said, a genuine, peaceful smile touching my lips for the first time in twelve years.
