Chapter 79 - The Vault of the Seven Sisters
The heavy mahogany doors of Courtroom 4B swung open with a resounding thud that cut through the smooth, droning cadence of the defense attorney's argument.
The room was packed. Reporters from every major syndicate occupied the back benches; Arthur’s surviving political cronies sat in the middle rows, their faces pale, their silk ties tight against their throats.
At the defense table sat Eleanor.
She had spent three weeks in the Henrico County jail, but she had managed to obtain a tailored cream suit from her Richmond wardrobe. Her silver hair was coiffed into its familiar, imperious helmet. She sat with her hands folded, radiating the arrogant confidence of a woman who believed that the law was simply a minor inconvenience that Arthur’s money would eventually dissolve.
Beside her, in a bright orange jumpsuit and heavy leg shackles, sat my sister, Julian’s enforcer. Her face was hollow, her eyes darting nervously toward the doors.
When I stepped into the center aisle, the silence in the room became absolute.
I was covered in Georgia swamp clay. My jacket was torn at the shoulder, my hair was matted with dried rain, and the faint white scars across my throat stood out like raised wire against my pale skin. Behind me walked Thomas, his service uniform battered, followed by Marcus Vance and two armed federal marshals carrying an archival projector.
Eleanor turned her head slowly, her lip curling into a practiced, maternal sneer.
"June," she said, her voice carrying through the vaulted ceiling of the courtroom, sweet, condescending, and laced with venom. "Look at you. Making a spectacle of yourself as usual. I told you in that hospital room, you never knew when to leave things alone."
The presiding judge, an elderly jurist with no ties to Cedar County, banged his gavel sharply. "Counsel, control your client. Young lady, who are you and what is the meaning of this interruption?"
Assistant U.S. Attorney Vance—Marcus’s son, sitting at the prosecution table—stood up immediately.
"Your Honor, the government moves to reopen the evidentiary presentation on the defense motion for bond. We introduce the certified records of the Vance Covenant, delivered under seal by the primary heir to the estate."
"Objection!" Eleanor’s lead counsel shouted, jumping to his feet. "This is an unverified civilian! The Holloway estate is fully incorporated under the 1985 Cedar County decrees!"
"The 1985 decrees were signed by a ghost," I said, stepping past the counsel table until I stood three feet from Eleanor.
I didn't yell. I didn't shake. I looked down into the face that had watched me choke on my own blood and then offered me a paper cup of coffee to buy my silence.
"You aren't Mrs. Holloway," I said.
Eleanor’s smile froze. A tiny, involuntary tremor broke through her right eyelid.
"Arthur never divorced Clara Vance," I continued, laying the microfiche manifest on the clerk's mahogany desk with a dull, final click. "The marriage license you keep in your safe deposit box in Charlottesville was issued to Arthur and an Eleanor Riggs. You never took his name on a legal deed. You were an employee with a power of attorney that expired forty-eight hours after Arthur died."
My sister let out a choked, ragged sound from behind her shackles, looking frantically between Eleanor and the bench. "Mama? Mama, what is she talking about? You said the trust was ours!"
"Shut up, you idiot!" Eleanor hissed, her mask of southern grace slipping completely, revealing the rabid, cornered animal beneath. She lunged forward against the defense table, her manicured nails digging into the wood. "I raised you, June! I took you in when that bastard brought you home from that girl in Norfolk! You owe me everything! You would have died in a county orphanage if I hadn't given you a room at Black Oak!"
"You didn't give me a room," I said, my voice dropping into a register that made the entire courtroom lean forward. "You gave me an attic. You gave my sister the master suite and Julian the deed to the timber. And when Julian tried to murder me to cover his signature forgery, you walked into my hospital room and told me to be grateful for a cup of coffee."
I leaned down, so close she could smell the swamp mud and the burnt thermite on my skin.
"Your accounts are frozen, Eleanor. The house in Richmond has been seized by the Department of the Interior. And Black Oak... Black Oak belongs to Clara."
Eleanor’s face drained of every drop of color. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out except a pathetic, rattling gasp. The pearl earring she wore in her left ear—the mate to the one recovered from the river vault—trembled violently against her neck.
Judge Harrison did not even pick up his pen.
"Motion for bond is denied," he ruled, his voice echoing like a death sentence through the hall. "The defendant will be remanded to the federal detention facility in Alexandria. The marshal will take custody of all real estate titles immediately."
As the marshals stepped forward and seized Eleanor’s arms, pulling her backward from the table, my sister began to weep—a high, pathetic wail that filled the room.
Eleanor didn't weep. She glared at me with pure, undiluted hatred as the iron handcuffs clicked around her manicured wrists.
"You think you won, June?" she whispered through clenched teeth, her face inches from mine as they dragged her toward the side door. "You think you're safe? Arthur didn't keep those ledgers for himself. The men in New York haven't even started looking at you yet."
May you like
"Let them look," I said.
***
