Chapter 5 - The Cease and Desist
"She looked right at you," Declan whispered, his voice trembling with a rage I had never seen in him. "She watched you hit the glass, and she adjusted her dress."
"Marcus," Frank Vance said, entering the van from the sidewalk where he had been pacing. "Export three encrypted copies onto separate flash drives. One goes to the Richmond Commonwealth’s Attorney. One goes into my personal safe. The third stays with Declan."
"What about the fundraiser?" I asked, my voice cold. The shock had burned away, leaving behind a hard, crystalline certainty. "She’s at twenty-eight thousand dollars now. The local news station shared her post an hour ago."
Frank took out his leather folder. "Now, we let her climb as high up the flagpole as she wants. The higher she climbs, the further she drops. But we shut down her playground first."
At four in the afternoon, Frank sent two formal electronic notifications.
The first was a comprehensive fraud packet sent directly to the Trust and Safety division of the fundraising platform. It contained the police incident report number, a certified affidavit from Declan, my emergency room surgical notes detailing sixteen lacerations and a concussion, and a watermarked, ten-second clip of the recovered surveillance footage showing Vesper deliberately shoving me through the door.
The second document was an emergency cease-and-desist letter delivered by a private courier directly to my parents’ residence in the upscale neighborhood of Windsor Farms, where Vesper was staying.
We sat in Declan’s study, waiting.
At 5:15 PM, the GoFundMe page vanished. In its place was a sterile gray error message: *This campaign has been removed for violating our Terms of Service regarding fraudulent representation and harassment.*
Thirty seconds later, my phone began ringing.
It wasn't Vesper. It was my mother.
I put the call on speaker and tapped the record button on Declan’s desk.
"Sloane Avery!" my mother shrieked, her voice shrill enough to crack the glass in the windows. "What have you done? What did you do to your sister?"
"Hello, Mom," I said calmly.
"She is in her room hysterical! Her account was frozen, and they’re threatening to report her to the state attorney general for wire fraud! Have you completely lost your mind? She was trying to heal from the trauma of your wedding!"
"The trauma of pushing me through a window?" I replied.
"It was an accident! We told you that!"
"We have the video, Mom."
There was an immediate, suffocating silence on the other end of the line. The heavy breathing of my mother sounded like a bellows.
"What did you say?" she asked, her voice dropping into an unsteady register.
"Arthur Pendelton didn't delete the backup," I said clearly. "I have the security footage. Declan has it. Frank Vance has it. The police have it. It shows Vesper grabbing my dress, shoving me with both hands, watching me bleed out on the floor, and kicking my purse out of the way before faking her tears."
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"Sloane... you can't show that to anyone," my mother stammered, all the venom suddenly draining out of her, replaced by raw panic. "Your father... your father signed an indemnity agreement with Grandview. If that footage gets out, Arthur will lose his job, and your father could be sued for obstruction!"
"Then I suggest," I said, "that Dad finds himself a very good criminal lawyer."
