Chapter 12 - THE RECKONING
The conference room on the forty-first floor of the Richmond Federal Courthouse smelled of polished mahogany, old leather, and impending doom.
Derek sat at the end of the long glass table, looking like a ghost of the man who had strutted through River Road five days earlier. He wore a rumpled gray suit that hung loosely on his shoulders. Dark purple circles hollowed his eyes, his stubble was uneven, and his hands twitched constantly against his legal notepad.
Beside him sat his defense attorney, a sweating, middle-aged man named Bradley Croft, who looked as though he wished he were anywhere else on earth.
Evelyn was not present. She had been barred from the building after causing a screaming scene in the security lobby.
The heavy double doors swung open.
Audrey walked in.
She wore a bespoke ivory wool coat over a midnight-blue dress, walking with a measured, graceful pace. Behind her walked Marcus Sterling, flanked by two senior forensic investigators and Assistant U.S. Attorney David Keller.
Derek scrambled to his feet so fast his chair screeched against the hardwood floor.
"Audrey!" Derek gasped, taking an instinctive step toward her. "Audrey, please, thank God. You have to listen to me. This has gotten completely out of hand. These federal people... they’re talking about wire fraud. They’re talking about prison! You know I would never hurt you. You know everything I did was for our family!"
Audrey did not sit down. She stopped at the opposite end of the table, resting both hands lightly on the polished surface, looking across the vast expanse of glass at the man she had loved for six years.
"For our family, Derek?" Audrey asked, her voice calm and melodic. "Which part of our family were you protecting when you forged my name to steal two point four million dollars from an orphanage charity foundation?"
"I was going to pay it back!" Derek pleaded, his voice cracking with hysteria. "The market turned against me! I was trying to build an empire for Maisie! I was doing it for our daughter!"
"Do not say her name," Audrey said softly.
The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees.
Audrey pulled a single sheet of paper from Marcus’s folder and slid it across the glass. It drifted across the smooth surface and stopped inches from Derek’s trembling hands.
It was the petition for conservatorship.
Derek looked down at it. All the color drained from his skin until he looked completely gray.
"Did you think I would never find it?" Audrey asked, tilting her head slightly. "Did you and your mother really believe that I was so weak, so broken, that I would let you lock me in a sanitarium while you paraded your mistresses through my grandfather’s home?"
"Audrey... I didn't... that was Mom’s idea," Derek stammered, his eyes darting frantically between Audrey and the federal prosecutor. "Mom brought that lawyer to me! She said you were unstable! She said you were going to cut us off! I was terrified, Audrey! I was under so much pressure!"
"You sat in my bedroom drinking scotch while I was cut open on an operating table," Audrey said, her gaze unblinking. "You let another woman put her clothes on my child’s bassinet. You let your mother tell me to sleep in the guest room."
"I made a mistake!" Derek sobbed, tears finally breaking past his eyelids, spilling down his pale cheeks. He dropped to his knees right there on the courthouse carpet, clasping his hands together in desperate supplication. "Please, Audrey. For the love of God. I will sign anything. I will waive all rights to River Road. I will waive rights to the firm. Just drop the federal charges. Don't send me to prison. I’m your husband!"
Audrey looked down at him.
For months, she had feared this moment. She had feared that confronting the truth would break her heart into unfixable pieces. She had feared that seeing Derek on his knees would make her feel guilty, small, and cruel.
Instead, she felt nothing.
No anger. No vengeance. Only the profound, liberating realization that this pathetic, groveling man had never been her equal, and had never deserved a single second of her devotion.
"You are not my husband, Derek," Audrey said quietly. "You are just a man who borrowed things that didn't belong to him. And now the bill is due."
She turned her back on him and looked at Assistant U.S. Attorney Keller.
"Prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law, David."
"With pleasure, Mrs. Vance," Keller nodded.
May you like
As Audrey walked toward the heavy conference room doors, Derek’s screams echoed against the glass and wood behind her—screams of panic, rage, and total devastation as the two federal marshals stepped forward to clasp cold steel around his wrists.
***
