Chapter 5 - The Smear Campaign
Genesis Vance’s Facebook profile had over fifteen thousand followers—a collection of Beverly Hills socialites, charity board members, country club associates, and church auxiliary members who hung on her every curated post about gardening, philanthropy, and family values.
I opened the app on my phone and clicked on the thumbnail.
Genesis was sitting on the chintz sofa in her Hidden Hills living room. The lighting was soft, deliberately dimmed to emphasize her tear-streaked cheeks and pale, trembling lips. She wore a modest black sweater, no jewelry, and held a rosary in her right hand.
*“My dear friends,”* Genesis began, her voice quivering with a practiced, dramatic tremor that belonged on a daytime soap opera. *“I come to you this morning with a broken heart. As many of you know, our family gathered last night to celebrate life and blessings. But evil walked into our home.”*
She took a ragged, theatrical breath, dabbing at the corner of her eye with a tissue.
*“Our daughter-in-law, Clara, whom we have welcomed with open arms for four years, suffered a catastrophic psychological breakdown at our table. When my son, Jackson—a man who has given up his own career dreams to support her ambitions—gently tried to address her erratic behavior, she turned violent. She smashed our family china, screaming obscenities, and then turned the weapon on herself to stage an assault.”*
My breath didn’t catch this time. My blood didn’t boil. It was so absurd, so utterly grotesque, that it went past anger directly into clinical observation.
*“My son is currently being held without bail because of her monstrous fabrications,”* Genesis continued, looking directly into the camera lens with wide, mournful eyes. *“She has locked him out of his own home. She has frozen his accounts. She is an unstable, dangerous woman who used our family for social climbing and is now trying to destroy my boy’s reputation to cover up her own financial ruin. Please pray for Jackson. Pray for justice. And if any of you do business with her firm, Riverfront Architectural Group… please, protect yourselves.”*
The comments were already pouring in like an open sewer line.
*“Oh, Genesis, I am horrified! I always thought there was something cold about that girl!”*
*“Arrest her! How could she do this to Jackson?”*
*“I’m calling the Riverfront developers today. We cannot have a violent, unstable person designing city projects!”*
Within two hours, the video had been shared five hundred times across the wealthy enclaves of Hidden Hills, Calabasas, and Pasadena.
By nine in the morning, my phone began ringing off the hook.
It wasn't Jackson. It wasn't Arthur.
It was David Keller, the lead project director for the Minneapolis Riverfront Development—the twenty-eight-million-dollar urban park and residential complex that was the crown jewel of my professional career.
“Clara,” David said, his voice clipped, tense, and devoid of its usual warmth. “Have you seen the internet this morning?”
“I have, David,” I said, sitting at my kitchen island with a cup of black tea, watching the private security guards patrol the perimeter of my terrace.
“We’re getting calls from city council members, Clara,” David said, his frustration boiling over. “Someone forwarded Genesis Vance’s video to the entire municipal planning board. There are people asking if our lead architect is facing criminal charges for domestic violence and fraud. You know how sensitive the city is to bad press right now. If this isn't handled in twenty-four hours, the board is going to exercise the morality clause in your contract and reassign the project to Perkins & Will.”
The morality clause.
Arthur’s fingerprints were all over this. He knew that the quickest way to force a settlement was to cut off my oxygen supply—my career. If I lost the Riverfront Project, my firm would hemorrhage money, my reputation in the Midwest would be incinerated, and I would be forced to capitulate just to keep the lights on.
“David,” I said, my voice cutting through his panic like a scalpel. “Give me until four o'clock this afternoon.”
“Clara, I don't think you understand the pressure I’m under—”
“David,” I repeated, firmer this time. “In twenty-four hours, the city council will not be talking about me. They will be talking about the Vance family. And Jackson Vance will never show his face in a commercial development meeting again. Do not pull that contract until you see what I send to the press at three o’clock.”
There was a long pause on the other end of the line. David let out a low whistle. “You sound different, Clara.”
“I had seven stitches put in my head last night, David. I’m very different. Wait until three.”
I hung up, dialed Maya, and clicked Jackson’s cloned hard drive into my primary workstation.
“Maya,” I said. “Remember that Hidden Hills home automation system Jackson insisted on installing in his parents' dining room last Christmas?”
Maya laughed—a short, dark sound. “The one he bragged about for three months because it had integrated high-definition motion cameras disguised in the crown molding for ‘home security’?”
“That’s the one,” I said, my fingers flying across the mechanical keyboard. “Jackson had the master administrator account linked to his home server here in Hollywood so he could manage Arthur’s tech support. Genesis never changed the master password. She doesn't even know how to restart the router.”
“Tell me you didn't,” Maya whispered, her voice practically vibrating with glee.
“I did,” I said, clicking an MP4 file that had finished downloading from the Hidden Hills cloud storage.
The screen opened to a crystal-clear, 4K video feed of the Vance dining room from the previous evening.
There was the roast lamb.
There was Genesis, smiling like a predator as she demanded the deed to my grandfather’s apartment and $1,200 a month.
There was me, sitting calmly, shaking my head and uttering a clear, quiet: *“No.”*
And there was Jackson Vance—his face purple with rage, lifting an eight-inch heavy ceramic dish with both hands, screaming *“How dare you say no to my mother, you useless woman?”* and hurling it with maximum force directly into the side of my head.
The audio was pristine. The sickening *crack* of the porcelain against my skull echoed through my high-end studio speakers. The blood was instantly visible, spilling down my neck as Jackson stood there panting like an animal while his mother casually set down her carving knife and Arthur reached for his wine glass.
“Oh, Clara,” Maya breathed, her legal mind immediately calculating the nuclear fallout. “This isn't just an assault charge. This is felony assault with a deadly weapon resulting in great bodily injury. This is a five-year mandatory minimum in state prison.”
“We’re not giving it to the police yet,” I said.
Maya paused. “Why not?”
May you like
“Because Genesis wanted a public spectacle,” I said, watching the video loop over and over—the plate flying, my head snapping to the side, the blood hitting the white cloth. “She wanted to use the court of public opinion to destroy my life. Let’s give her the public spectacle she asked for.”
***
