Chapter 9 - The Ashes of an Empire
The aftermath was swift and merciless.
The trial lasted barely three weeks. With the medical evidence, my financial records, and Brooke turning on Dominic and Victoria to save herself, the jury deliberated for less than two hours.
Brooke was sentenced to eight years in a women's correctional facility for physical abuse and fraud.
Without her wealthy protectors, she was nothing. Her son, Liam, was placed in the foster system—a tragedy, but one she brought upon him herself.
Victoria was sentenced to five years in federal prison.
She tried to plead for house arrest due to her age. But the judge, a mother of three, looked at the photos of Leo's cigarette burns and slammed the gavel.
The shock of being stripped of her luxury and thrown into a concrete cell caused Victoria to age twenty years in a month.
And Dominic.
He faced the heaviest charges for criminal negligence, allowing the abuse to happen, and massive financial fraud.
He was sentenced to twelve years.
I visited him once, and only once, before he was transferred to a maximum-security facility.
He sat behind the reinforced glass in an orange jumpsuit, looking hollow, exhausted, and utterly defeated.
He picked up the phone. His hand trembled. "Clara..."
"I'm here to have you sign the termination of parental rights," I said coldly, sliding a single piece of paper through the slot beneath the glass.
"Sign it, and I will make sure the guards put money in your commissary account so you don't starve. Refuse, and you rot here with nothing."
He looked at the paper. It was the final nail in his coffin.
"How is he?" Dominic choked out, tears pooling in his eyes. "How is my boy?"
"He is my boy," I corrected, my voice like ice.
"And he is learning that monsters don't live under the bed. Sometimes, they sit at the dinner table. But he also knows that his mother is the one who hunts the monsters down."
Dominic broke down sobbing. With a shaking hand, he picked up the pen and signed his rights away forever.
I took the paper, stood up, and hung up the phone without another word.
May you like
I walked out of the prison and into the bright sunlight, breathing in the fresh air.
The past was dead. The future was waiting.
