Chapter 8 - The Scramble of the Rats
The ballroom of the Grand Aurelia descended into absolute pandemonium.
What was supposed to be the society event of the decade had transformed into the most documented corporate takedown in American history. Flashbulbs went off in blinding, synchronized pulses as over thirty society journalists, who had been invited to cover the bridal fashion, frantically livestreamed the arrests directly to millions of viewers worldwide.
Vivienne shrieked as the federal marshals pulled her down the altar steps. Her towering diamond tiara slipped from her elaborately styled hair, bouncing down the marble stairs before shattering into several pieces near my feet.
“Julian, do something!” she screamed, thrashing against the agents' grip. “Tell them! Tell them it was your idea! You drew up the shell companies! You paid Adler!”
Julian, pinned to the floor near the orchid arrangements with a marshal’s knee planted firmly between his shoulder blades, lifted his bruised face from the stone. His patrician composure had vanished, replaced by the snarling, vicious desperation of a cornered beast.
“Shut your mouth, you stupid bitch!” Julian spat, his voice echoing through the open audio system. “You’re the one who wanted her dead! You said you couldn't stand another board meeting looking at her face! I have every single text message saved on an encrypted server in Zurich! You offered me fifty percent of the voting shares to make her disappear!”
The front rows of Boston’s high society recoiled as if they had been doused in acid.
“My God,” Great-Aunt Eleanor breathed, clutching her pearls with a trembling, liver-spotted hand. “Arthur’s own blood… Arthur’s own daughter…”
“Get them out of here,” Agent Vance commanded, waving his hand toward the double doors.
The marshals dragged Julian to his feet. His tailored tuxedo was shredded at the shoulder seam, a trickle of blood leaking from his split lower lip onto his crisp white dress shirt. As he was marched past me, he stopped, his chest heaving, his eyes wide with a mixture of terror and pathetic pleading.
“Evelyn…” he choked out, his voice dropping to a desperate whine. “Evelyn, you know me. You know what they did to my family’s firm. I was backed into a corner… I loved you, Evelyn. I swear to God, I never wanted them to hurt you—”
I didn't blink. I didn't speak.
I simply stared through him as if he were nothing more than a pane of dirty glass.
Seeing that his charm had zero currency, Julian’s face twisted into an ugly mask of hatred. “You think you won?” he hissed, struggling against the marshals' grip. “You’re a freak! Look at your face! You’re scarred for life! You spent four years in a cage, and you’ll spend the rest of your life looking like a monster!”
Marcus stepped forward from the side aisle.
Without a word, Marcus took half a step into Julian’s path and planted his open palm against Julian’s chest, shoving him backward into the custody of the marshals with enough force to knock the wind completely out of his lungs.
“Keep walking, Sterling-Cross,” Marcus growled in a voice like grinding granite. “Before the marshals look the other way and I show you what four years in a cage actually feels like.”
Julian shrank back, his bravado instantly evaporating, and allowed the agents to hustle him through the exit doors.
Vivienne was next.
She refused to walk. Her heavy bridal skirts bunched around her knees as the agents were forced to practically carry her down the ivory runner she had walked in triumph fifteen minutes earlier. Her designer makeup was ruined, black mascara running in thick, grotesque tracks down her cheeks, her face mottled with red blotches of pure hysteria.
As she reached the center of the room, she locked eyes with me one last time.
“I’ll get out, Evelyn!” she screamed, her voice cracking into a shrill, bird-like screech that made several guests cover their ears. “I have the best defense attorneys in the country! The Vance trust will pay for my bail! You can’t leave me in a cell! I’m your sister! You hear me? *I’m your sister!*”
“The Vance trust,” I said, speaking into the still-active lapel microphone, “has already been frozen by emergency order of the Massachusetts probate court. You don't have an attorney, Vivienne. You have a public defender.”
Vivienne let out a strangled, incoherent wail as the heavy oak doors of the Grand Aurelia slammed shut behind her, cutting off her voice forever.
The ballroom fell into an uneasy, suffocating quiet.
Three hundred guests stood awkwardly among the shattered champagne flutes and trampled orchids, their expensive dresses and tuxedos suddenly feeling ridiculous. Several board members of Vance Global Enterprises began edging toward me, their faces sweating, adjusting their ties with nervous, fawning smiles.
“Evelyn… my dear girl,” began Richard Hayes, the senior vice chairman of the board who had voted four years ago to ratify Vivienne’s control of the company. He reached out an expansive, manicured hand, stepping over the broken glass. “We… we are in absolute shock. If we had known—if there had been the slightest inkling of this monstrous criminality—”
I turned my head slowly, fixing him with a gaze that made him stop dead in his tracks, his hand freezing in mid-air.
“You knew, Richard,” I said quietly, the coldness in my voice sending a visible shiver through his portly frame. “You signed off on the liquidation of my personal assets within forty-eight hours of my alleged death. You accepted a four-million-dollar 'special management bonus' from Vivienne thirty days later.”
Hayes’s face drained of all color. His mouth opened and closed like a fish suffocating on a dock.
“Marcus,” I said, turning my back on the room.
“Yes, Miss Evelyn?”
“Call the emergency meeting of the board for eight o'clock tomorrow morning,” I said, adjusting the oversized trench coat over my bruised shoulders. “I want every director's resignation on my desk by noon. Anyone who hesitates will have their personal trading accounts handed directly to Agent Vance.”
“Understood, ma'am,” Marcus replied with a crisp, precise nod.
I didn't look at the crowd again.
May you like
Holding our mother’s emerald collar tightly in my scarred, bleeding right hand, I walked down the altar steps, stepped across the ivory runner, and walked out of the ballroom, my head held high, leaving the ruins of their high-society empire burning in my wake.
***
