Chapter 8 - The Public Execution-8
Eleanor’s eyes narrowed into sharp slits. "Julian, stop this foolishness at once. You are embarrassing yourself in front of the board. Go back to the hospital and take care of your wife."
"Oh, Clara is being taken care of, Mother," I said, my voice dropping into a low, deadly register that made the trustees look up in surprise. "She’s recovering from the internal hemorrhage you caused when you forced her to stand on her feet for three hours after her C-section."
A murmur went around the table. The elderly trustee frowned. "What did he say? Hemorrhage?"
"Ignore him!" Eleanor snapped, her voice rising in pitch for the first time. "He’s emotional! His wife had a minor medical setback because she refused to follow basic rest protocols—"
David hit a button on the remote control.
The motorized blinds over the boardroom’s floor-to-ceiling windows descended automatically, plunging the room into twilight, and a blinding beam of light shot out from the projector, casting a massive 100-inch image onto the white wall behind Eleanor's head.
The living room video began playing.
The high-definition audio boomed through the conference room speakers, filling the space with the sound of my mother's harsh, screaming voice: "Get up! The chicken needs to be seasoned! You are an ungrateful, lazy girl, and if you don't finish this meal before Julian gets home, I will make sure you never see this baby again!"
The trustees gasped. One of them actually recoiled in his chair, staring at the screen in utter horror.
On the wall, the video showed Clara weeping on her knees, desperately trying to chop vegetables while clutching her bleeding stomach. It showed her collapsing face-down on the rug. And then, in agonizing, unedited detail, it showed Eleanor sitting down at the dining table, taking a bite of food, and muttering: "Drama queen."
Eleanor’s face went from pale to a mottled, terrifying shade of purple. She slammed both palms flat on the table, standing up so fast her leather chair rolled backward into the wall.
"Turn that off!" she screamed, her voice cracking with pure, unhinged fury. "Turn it off right now! That video is an altered, illegal invasion of privacy! Marcus, do something!"
Marcus Reed didn't move. He was staring at the second slide David had just projected onto the wall—a high-resolution scan of Eleanor’s handwritten checklist, including the legal notes detailing their plan to file a fraudulent perjury claim to seize the forty-million-dollar trust.
"That note," David announced to the room, "was recovered by hospital medical staff from the victim's person. It details a premeditated conspiracy between Eleanor Vance and attorney Marcus Reed to commit judicial fraud, falsify child endangerment reports, and illegally manipulate the succession clauses of the Vance Generational Land Trust."
The senior trustee stood up, his face pale with absolute disgust, pointing a shaking finger at Eleanor. "My God, Eleanor... you tried to destroy your son's family for the trust control?"
"It’s my money!" Eleanor shrieked, losing every shred of her lifelong composure, her civilized facade evaporating into the raw, ugly reality of her greed. "I built this family! My husband gave forty years of his life to that land! I will NOT let some cheap, penniless girl like Clara Montgomery take what belongs to the Vance bloodline!"
"It doesn't belong to the Vance bloodline anymore, Eleanor," I said softly.
The heavy double doors of the boardroom opened for the second time.
May you like
Stepping through the threshold were two special agents from the State Attorney General’s Office, followed by two uniformed state troopers holding active arrest warrants.
"Eleanor Vance and Marcus Reed," the lead agent announced, pulling out pair of steel handcuffs. "You are under arrest for conspiracy to commit medical endangerment, subornation of perjury, falsification of official documents, and attempted trust fraud under the State Organized Crime Act."
