“You told me to stop leeching off of you, Dad,” I whispered, the words slipping out like a symphony of destruction. “You told me to stand on my own two feet. So, I did. And in doing so, I stopped protecting you.”
I stood up straight and nodded to the lead FBI agent.
“Breach it,” the agent commanded.
A tactical officer stepped up to the driver’s side window. With a swift, brutal strike from a steel baton, the reinforced glass shattered into a million glittering pieces.
Mia screamed a horrifying, guttural shriek as an agent reached through the broken window, unlocked the door manually, and yanked it open. Two agents grabbed Mia by her designer jacket, dragging her violently out of the leather seat and slamming her face-first against the matte-black hood of the stolen car. The harsh, metallic click of steel handcuffs ratcheting tightly around her wrists echoed down Rodeo Drive.
“Mom! Dad! Help me!” Mia wailed, her pristine image entirely destroyed, snot and tears mixing with the blood from a small scratch on her cheek.
But my parents couldn’t help her. My mother was sobbing hysterically into her hands inside the car, and my father was weeping on the pavement, a broken, defeated man.
I turned my back on the wreckage. I didn’t look back as I walked to the Maybach, slipping into the quiet, air-conditioned sanctuary of the backseat. The door closed with a heavy, final thud, shutting out the screams of my past forever.
Chapter 5: The Aftermath
Six months later.
The contrast between the two diverging paths of my life and my family’s life was absolute, stark, and undeniably beautiful.
In a bleak, fluorescent-lit federal courtroom in downtown Los Angeles, the air was stale and heavy with despair. Mia, stripped of her designer clothes and her fake blonde extensions, wore a shapeless, oversized orange jumpsuit. She stood before a federal judge, her shoulders trembling violently.
The Sterling legal team had been merciless. They refused any plea deals that didn’t include maximum prison time. They presented the forged signature, the video surveillance of her flaunting the card at the boutique, and her extensive, arrogant social media posts bragging about her stolen wealth.
“Mia Vance,” the federal judge declared, his voice echoing in the silent room. “For the charges of federal wire fraud, grand larceny, and corporate identity theft, I sentence you to a mandatory minimum of five years in a federal correctional institution, without the possibility of early parole.”
Mia collapsed against the defendant’s table, wailing uncontrollably as the bailiffs grabbed her arms to drag her away.
In the gallery behind her, my parents sat in stunned, hollow silence. They looked as though they had aged twenty years in six months. They had liquidated their retirement funds to pay for Mia’s high-priced defense attorneys, a gamble that had failed spectacularly. Furthermore, Victor Sterling’s civil lawyers had filed a secondary lawsuit against them for complicity and emotional distress caused to his proxy. To avoid absolute bankruptcy, they had been forced to sign over the deed to the suburban home I had grown up in. The bank was foreclosing on them next week. They had thrown me away to protect a princess, and ended up paupers.
Miles away from the depressing grey walls of the courthouse, the afternoon sunlight was streaming in through the floor-to-ceiling windows of a magnificent, two-story penthouse overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
I stood on the glass balcony, breathing in the crisp, salty air of the coast. I was holding a crystal flute of vintage champagne.
Victor had rewarded my loyalty, my handling of the crisis, and my absolute discretion with a massive promotion. I was no longer an invisible proxy; I had been named Vice President of Global Operations for Sterling Enterprises. The penthouse was a signing bonus.
My assistant, a sharp, efficient young woman named Elena, walked out onto the balcony holding a silver tray. On it rested a stack of letters.
“These were forwarded from your old P.O. Box, Ms. Vance,” Elena said softly. “They are marked urgent.”
I looked down at the envelopes. They were covered in my mother’s frantic, trembling handwriting. Words like PLEASE, WE NEED YOU, and FORGIVE US were underlined aggressively in red ink.
I didn’t feel a surge of anger. I didn’t feel a pang of guilt. I felt absolutely, profoundly nothing. The emotional umbilical cord had been severed the day they cheered for my eviction.
“Thank you, Elena,” I said, picking up the stack of letters.
