Chapter 6 - The Public Verdict
With a single keystroke from Rachel, the massive projection screen behind the stage—which had been showing a slideshow of charitable donations—went black.
Then, a video began to play.
It was crisp, high-definition, and the audio was crystal clear.
The screen showed our kitchen. I was standing by the stove. Vivian was holding a heavy copper pot.
“Next time,” Vivian’s voice boomed through the ballroom’s state-of-the-art sound system, “dinner will be ready before my son gets home.”
On screen, the boiling oil descended. The guests in the ballroom gasped in horror. Several women screamed.
The video didn't stop there. It showed me collapsing, screaming in agony. Then, Daniel walked into the frame. He didn't look at me. He looked at his shoes. He stepped over my body.
“Look what you made her do,” Daniel’s recorded voice echoed off the high ceilings of the country club.
The ballroom was dead silent. Nobody moved. Nobody breathed.
Daniel’s face went from pale to completely white. He turned to the tech booth, shouting, “Shut it off! Turn that garbage off!”
But the screen changed. It didn't go dark. Instead, it displayed a series of financial documents.
“What you are looking at,” I said, my voice amplified by the microphone I had slipped from a nearby podium, “are the financial records of Cole & Sons Logistics. Specifically, the transfer of four point two million dollars from the employee pension fund to an offshore account owned by Vivian Cole.”
“This is a lie! It’s fake!” Vivian shrieked, her aristocratic mask completely shattering. She lunged toward me, her manicured nails clawing at the air, but two security guards—whom Rachel had hired privately—stepped between us.
“And finally,” I continued, my voice steady and cold as ice, “the five-million-dollar life insurance policy taken out on my life just four weeks before this ‘accident.’ A policy with a double-indemnity clause for accidental death.”
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I looked at the crowd of high-society elites, the politicians, the business leaders who had courted the Coles for decades.
“I was not clumsy,” I said, looking directly into the camera of a local news crew that had been covering the gala. “I was target practice.”
