Chương 8 - The Fall of the House of Whitmore
Special Agent Reynolds stepped onto the stage, flashing a gold badge directly into Bradley’s face.
“Bradley Whitmore,” Agent Reynolds said, his voice carrying over the dead microphone. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”
“Get your hands off me!” Bradley screamed, thrashing wildly as the agent twisted his arms behind his back. The sickening *click* of steel handcuffs echoed across the stage. “Do you know who I am? Do you know who my family is?”
“We know exactly who you are, Mr. Whitmore,” Agent Reynolds replied calmly, securing the cuffs. “You are under arrest for federal wire fraud, conspiracy to commit extortion, and felony falsification of legal documents.”
At the front row, two female state troopers approached Margaret Whitmore.
Margaret backed away, knocking over a champagne bucket that spilled ice across the carpet. “Don’t touch me! I am Margaret Whitmore! You are common public servants! Richard, tell them! Sterling!”
She looked around frantically for Richard Sterling, but the Whitmore family’s pit-bull lawyer was already slipping out the side exit, clutching his briefcase and pretending he had never seen Margaret in his life.
“Margaret Whitmore,” the female trooper said, gripping Margaret’s wrists firmly. “You are under arrest for felony domestic battery, assault with intent to cause harm, and grand larceny.”
“No! No! Lily, you ungrateful gutter rat!” Margaret shrieked, her emeralds bouncing wildly as she was forced down toward the floor to be cuffed. “I made you! We gave you everything! You would be nothing without us!”
Lily walked forward slowly, stopping just three feet from where Margaret was being restrained.
Lily looked down at her former tormentor. There was no hatred in Lily’s eyes; there was only the cold, unshakeable pity of someone looking at a crushed insect.
“You didn’t make me, Margaret,” Lily said softly. “You gave me nothing. But you did give me one thing: the determination to make sure my daughter never grows up in a world poisoned by people like you.”
Margaret lunged forward with a snarl, but the troopers hoisted her to her feet and dragged her through the ballroom. Press photographers from three local news outlets, who had been tipped off by Marcus an hour earlier, swarmed the doors, cameras flashing relentlessly as the grande dame of the Whitmore empire was pushed into the back of a police cruiser in tears.
Bradley was led down the stage steps, his hair disheveled, his suit jacket torn at the shoulder from resisting arrest.
As he passed me, he stopped, his chest heaving, his eyes burning with venom.
“You planned this from the second you stepped into that nursery,” Bradley hissed at me. “You set us up.”
I stepped closer to him, tilted my head, and touched the pearl brooch pinned to my lapel.
“I didn’t set you up, Bradley,” I whispered so only he could hear. “You wrote the script. You directed the play. I just provided the camera.”
I checked my watch.
The hands clicked together at the top of the dial.
“It’s midnight, Bradley,” I said with a calm, devastating smile. “Your name is officially ash.”
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The federal agents shoved him forward, marching him out into the flashing red-and-blue lights of the waiting squad cars.
***
