Chapter 8 - The Price of Nostalgia
The private holding room at the county courthouse was cold, sterile, and lit by buzzing fluorescent bulbs that stripped away every ounce of glamour Claire Sterling had ever possessed.
She sat at the stainless-steel table, her platinum hair limp and unwashed, wearing an oversized gray county sweatshirt. The diamond rings had been confiscated; the designer shoes replaced with standard-issue canvas slip-ons.
The door clicked open, and I walked in, accompanied by Marcus Vance.
Claire looked up, her bloodshot eyes flaring with instant, toxic malice. "Did you come here to gloat? To see what you did to me?"
I sat down in the plastic chair across from her, smoothing the fabric of my wool coat over my seven-month bump. I looked at her with neither anger nor pity. I looked at her the way a scientist looks at an eradicated specimen under glass.
"I didn't do this to you, Claire," I said calmly. "Your greed did. Mark is facing six to eight years at Upstate Correctional for aggravated burglary, terroristic threats, and felony grand larceny. He took a plea deal this morning."
Claire let out a harsh, bitter laugh. "Of course he did. Coward. He always took the path of least resistance. He probably cried to the judge."
"He did," Marcus Vance noted smoothly, opening a thin leather folio on the table. "And as part of his allocution, he provided the district attorney with three years of encrypted text messages, wire transfer receipts, and personal ledgers detailing your intimate involvement in the boutique embezzlement."
Claire’s breath hitched. Her hands began to tremble against the cold steel table. "He... he promised he deleted those."
"Nostalgia is an expensive habit, Claire," I said softly. "You kept him on a leash because you needed his money, and he kept you around because his ego couldn't survive without your constant validation. You two deserve each other. But you don't deserve my life. And you certainly don't deserve my daughter’s future."
"What do you want, Sarah?" she whispered, her voice finally breaking, the last remnants of her high-society arrogance crumbling into dust. "You’ve already taken my business. My apartment is being seized by the bankruptcy trustee. I have nothing left."
"I want you to sign the civil forfeiture disclaimer," Marcus said, sliding a single sheet of paper toward her. "You formally surrender any and all claims to the furnishings, artwork, and personal property currently housed within the Vance estate that you claimed were your 'marital leftovers.' You agree to a lifetime non-disparagement and permanent restraining order regarding Sarah and her child."
"And if I sign?" Claire asked, tears finally spilling over her mascara-stained cheeks.
"Then Marcus will recommend to the prosecutor that your sentence run concurrently with your probation, rather than behind bars," I answered. "You’ll be broke, Claire. You’ll have to find an actual job. You’ll have to live like an ordinary person without a trust fund to leech from. But you’ll be free."
Claire stared at the document. Her hand shook so violently she could barely hold the cheap ballpoint pen Marcus provided.
With a ragged sob, she scrawled her signature at the bottom of the page—the final surrender of a woman who had tried to build an empire out of someone else’s foundation.
I stood up, buttoning my coat.
"One last thing, Claire," I paused at the heavy iron door, looking back at her hunched, pathetic figure.
She looked up, sniffling. "What?"
May you like
"The blue porcelain urn you loved so much?" I smiled—a cold, beautiful, victorious smile. "I smashed it with a hammer and threw it in the municipal recycling. The peonies look much better without it."
***
