Chapter 8 - The Lawyer’s Early Arrival
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Paul let out a pathetic, strangled sob from the couch, pulling his knees up like a child. "I told you, Evelyn. I told you Vance was only protecting himself. He was always going to sacrifice us if the state audit was triggered."
Evelyn stood frozen, her eyes wide, staring at the damning email displayed in sixty-point font across her husband’s monitors.
"You're not filing anything tomorrow," I said, my voice echoing off the wood-paneled walls. "You're going to sit in that dining room, and you're going to wait for Arthur Vance to arrive."
"Claire, please," Evelyn gasped, her hands coming together in a frantic, pleading gesture. The proud, untouchable matriarch was gone, reduced to a trembling criminal facing the collapse of her gilded cage. "I'm your mother. I gave you life. Everything I did, I did to preserve what Julian built!"
"My father built a life of honor, integrity, and love," I said, looking down at my sleeping daughter, whose small chest rose and fell against my heart. "You used his name to commit grand larceny, and you tried to sacrifice his only granddaughter to save your own skin."
I turned to Jason. "Call Detective Miller."
"Already sent him a secure packet thirty minutes ago," Jason replied, checking his phone. "He’s with the state police financial crimes division. He’s already routing it to the duty prosecutor. But Vance doesn't know that yet."
"Good," I said. "Let Vance come. Let him bring his notarized binders."
We didn't sleep that night.
Jason and I sat in the living room with Emma between us on the sofa, wrapped in her favorite fleece blanket. Megan sat on the floor by our feet, clutching a mug of tea with shaking hands, occasionally reaching out to stroke Emma’s soft brown hair, whispering quiet apologies through her tears. Upstairs, we could hear Evelyn pacing the floorboards—the ceaseless, erratic rhythm of a caged animal waiting for the executioner.
At precisely 7:15 AM on the morning of December 26th, the crunch of heavy tires on frozen gravel signaled the arrival of a vehicle in the long, circular driveway.
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Through the frosted front window, I watched a sleek black Mercedes sedan pull to a stop near the front porch. A tall, impeccably tailored man in a charcoal wool overcoat stepped out, carrying a thick, monogrammed leather briefcase.
Arthur Vance had arrived to collect his pound of flesh.
