Chapter 9 - The Reckoning
The room smelled of spilled champagne, melting wax, and ruined lives.
Sloane was still slumped over her chair, sobbing until her ribs heaved. Reid sat like a statue, staring at the floorboards between his feet.
Eleanor turned on me.
She didn't cry. The panic had hardened into a venomous, blistering rage. She marched toward me, her heels striking the floor like hammer blows.
"Are you happy now?" she hissed, stopping inches from my face. "Look at what you did! You ruined your sister’s life! You destroyed your father’s business! You humiliated me in front of every friend and associate I have ever known! For what? For sixty-four hundred dollars? For some petty, childish pride?"
"She didn't ruin this family, Eleanor," Arthur’s voice cut through the air.
He walked up behind her, placing a heavy hand on her shoulder and turning her around.
"You did," Arthur said. "You stole from Brooke. You encouraged Reid to commit fraud. You attempted to force our eldest daughter into a fraudulent marriage to cover up your youngest daughter's treachery."
"Arthur, you don't understand the pressure I was under!"
"I understand everything," Arthur said quietly. "Marcus informed me two hours ago about the irregular transfers from the household accounts over the last six months. It wasn't just the sixty-four hundred dollars, was it, Eleanor?"
Eleanor went rigid. "What?"
Marcus stepped forward, pulling a thin blue folder from his briefcase. "Fourteen separate wire transfers totaling ninety-two thousand dollars from the family reserve account over the last eighteen months. Paid to private credit cards, interior design firms registered under Sloane's name, and luxury vehicle leases."
Arthur looked at Eleanor with a disgust so profound it seemed to age him ten years.
"You've been bleeding us dry," Arthur whispered. "And you were going to sacrifice Brooke to keep the spigot open."
"Arthur, no—"
"Get out," Arthur said.
"This is my home! You cannot—"
"You will stay at the downtown hotel tonight," Arthur said, his voice dropping to a deathly whisper. "Tomorrow morning, the locks on the Lake Forest house will be changed. Marcus has already filed the preliminary separation papers. If you contest them, I will hand every financial document on that screen to the state prosecutor's office for wire fraud and embezzlement."
Eleanor looked at Arthur, then at Marcus, and finally at me. For the first time in my life, I saw fear in her eyes—real, unadulterated terror. The social status she had spent fifty years cultivating had vanished in forty-five minutes.
May you like
She turned on her heel and practically ran out of the ballroom, her emerald gown trailing behind her like a shroud.
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