Chapter 7 - Handcuffs and Velvet
The click of the steel handcuffs locking around Prescott’s wrists was the sweetest sound I had ever heard.
"Get your hands off me!" Prescott shrieked, thrashing against the two federal marshals who shoved him roughly over the table, pressing his face into a plate of half-eaten caviar tartlets. "Do you know who I am? I’m Prescott Vance-Prescott! My grandfather built this city!"
"Your grandfather built tenements, kid," the marshal said impassively, wrenching Prescott's arms behind his back and snapping the double-locks shut. "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law."
Randolph didn't fight. When the federal agents approached him, the seventy-year-old patriarch simply slumped into his velvet chair, staring at the floor with glazed, unblinking eyes. His hands were shaking so hard he couldn't even raise them to be cuffed.
The agents pulled him up by his elbows, clicking the cold steel around his wrists before leading him toward the double doors.
As Prescott was hauled past me, his tuxedo ruined, his hair plastered with sweat and spilled sauce, he stopped. He looked at me, tears of humiliation and rage spilling over his eyelashes.
"Clara... please," he choked out, suddenly trying to switch tactics, trying to resurrect the boy who had once smiled at me under the autumn trees on campus. "Clara, baby... I was drunk. You know I didn't mean it. I love you. We can fix this. Tell your father to call off the marshals! We’re married! For better or worse, remember? You promised!"
I looked at him. Really looked at him.
I felt no hatred. I felt no burning desire to scream or gloat.
All I felt was a vast, clean, beautiful emptiness.
"You broke your vows the first time you thought you owned me, Prescott," I said, my voice steady and crystalline. "And as for the prenuptial agreement your father forced me to sign?"
I leaned in, whispering so only he could hear.
"Clause forty-two. In the event of physical battery proven by public record or criminal charge, the prenuptial agreement is completely nullified, and the offending spouse forfeits all personal equity to the victim. You didn't just slap me tonight, Prescott."
I smiled, and the cut on my lip didn't hurt at all.
"You signed over your entire personal trust fund to my charity foundation."
Prescott’s jaw dropped. His knees buckled completely, and the two marshals had to drag him forward by his armpits, his polished shoes dragging along the marble floor, leaving two long, pathetic scuff marks across the hall.
The doors opened, and the corridor outside erupted in a blinding storm of camera flashes.
May you like
Reporters shouted over one another, microphones thrust forward, as the heir and the patriarch of the Prescott dynasty were shoved into the back of an unmarked NYPD cruiser parked right on the red carpet beneath the flashing blue lights of four federal vehicles.
***
