Chapter 8 - The Price of the Party
Pandemonium erupted across the lawn.
"Wait! No! You can't!" Eleanor shrieked, lunging toward me. She fell to her knees on the gravel, her manicured hands catching the hem of my trousers. "Ava, please! Have mercy! Victoria's family is here! Our friends are here! If you do this, we are ruined! We will be completely ruined!"
I looked down at the woman who had given birth to me. The woman who had chosen silence while her husband dragged me into the night.
"You ruined yourself eighteen years ago, Mother," I said, gently pulling my fabric from her grasp. "You just didn't receive the bill until today."
Harrison Sterling stepped forward, his jaw set in stone. He didn't look at Tyler. He looked up at the balcony where his daughter was now weeping openly into the arms of her maid of honor.
"Harrison!" Tyler cried, rushing to his father-in-law's side, grabbing his sleeve. "Harrison, listen to me! We can still hold the ceremony! We can move it to the country club! I'll pay for it—"
Harrison yanked his arm back as if he had been touched by a leper.
"With what money, Tyler?" Harrison’s voice was venomous. "With the money you embezzled from your sister? You lied to my daughter. You lied to me. You presented yourself as a partner in an estate you don't own a single brick of."
Harrison looked past Tyler to the two hundred guests who were now hurriedly gathering their coats, whispering furiously, pulling out their phones to capture the spectacle.
"The wedding is off," Harrison announced, loud enough for every guest to hear. "The Sterling family does not associate with thieves and frauds."
He turned on his heel and marched up the stairs to retrieve his daughter.
"No! Victoria! Wait!" Tyler took two steps to follow him, but Arthur Pendelton stepped directly into his path.
Arthur, who had taken orders from Tyler for a decade, who had been treated like dirt by my brother whenever he wanted the lawns re-mowed or the tennis courts cleared, stood like an oak tree.
"You're done walking these halls, boy," Arthur said quietly. "Your bags from the guest suite have already been packed and set out by the service gate."
Richard was leaning against the Maybach, breathing heavily, his tie loosened, looking like a man who had suffered a catastrophic stroke of reality. The arrogance, the booming patriarchal power, the polished veneer of the country gentleman—it was all gone. Stripped away to reveal the petty, vindictive clerk who had bullied a fourteen-year-old girl because he couldn't control his own life.
Marcus Chen stepped forward, pulling a second set of documents from his folder.
"Richard Reynolds," Marcus said, handing the papers to Deputy Miller, who formally pressed them into Richard's limp hands. "You are hereby served with a formal Notice to Vacate the estate manager’s cottage within seventy-two hours. Furthermore, a civil audit has been initiated by the Montgomery County District Attorney regarding eighty-two thousand dollars in unauthorized disbursements from the Vance Heritage Operating Account."
"A criminal audit?" Richard croaked, looking at the papers with glazed, uncomprehending eyes.
"Embezzlement, Richard," Marcus stated cleanly. "Unless the funds are restored in full by Monday at 5:00 PM, an arrest warrant will be issued. I suggest you consult a defense attorney. Though given your current liquidity, I doubt you can afford one."
Richard’s knees buckled. He sank down onto the stone steps of the estate he had spent thirty years pretending to rule, his head in his hands.
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Guests were streaming toward their cars in a frantic, embarrassed exodus. The caterers had stopped serving; the string quartet was packing their instruments into black velvet cases. The white silk tents, the crystal chandeliers, the thousands of white calla lilies—they stood as a monument to an empire that had vanished in twenty minutes.
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