Chapter 3 - The Broken Golden Boy
For ten seconds, the only sound on the street was the whining of the winter wind through the bare oak trees.
Garrick fumbled into his coat, violently yanking out his phone with hands that shook so badly he nearly dropped it into the snow. He tapped the screen frantically, bringing up his banking application.
He tried his Face ID. It spun.
*Error: Account Access Suspended. Contact Fraud Prevention Unit.*
He tapped into his personal checking account.
*Error: Administrative Freeze Applied.*
“No, no, no, no,” he muttered, his thumb hammering the screen until the glass made audible clicking sounds. “This is a mistake. This is a technical glitch. I have seventy-five thousand in my liquid checking account! I have three hundred thousand in my money market!”
“You had those balances, Mr. Vance,” Evelyn noted dryly. “Until the court issued the writ of attachment to satisfy the twenty-one years of unauthorized distributions you and your mother drew from the primary trust.”
“What is she talking about?” Eleanor shrieked, clutching Garrick’s arm so violently her fingernails bit through his wool sleeve. “Garrick! What does she mean, unauthorized? You told me you fixed it! You told me when your father died that you took care of all the paperwork! You told me the money was legally ours!”
Garrick shoved his mother away with a savage, reckless motion that sent her sprawling onto the snowy grass. “Shut up, Mom! Just shut your mouth!”
“Did you hear that, Deputy?” I said calmly. “My brother just assaulted a senior citizen on the public sidewalk.”
Deputy Miller took a decisive step forward, his hand unhooking the strap on his holster. “Sir, keep your hands off the lady, or you’re going down on the pavement in cuffs right now.”
Garrick ignored the officer entirely. He lunged toward me, stopping only when the second deputy stepped between us, chest-to-chest.
“Clara, listen to me!” Garrick yelled, his voice cracking into a high-pitched, desperate whine that bore no resemblance to the smug executive who had mocked my children twelve hours earlier. “You don't understand what you're doing! I have payroll to make on Friday! Vance Global Logistics has forty employees! We have three shipping containers clearing customs in Long Beach tomorrow! If those customs fees aren't paid by midnight, the port will seize the cargo! I’ll be ruined!”
“You aren't going to be ruined, Garrick,” I said, looking him dead in the eyes. “You are already ruined.”
“Clara, please!” Eleanor sobbed from the ground, pulling herself up onto her knees in the slush, completely uncaring of the mud ruining her precious mink coat. “I’m your mother! I birthed you! I took you to your piano lessons! I loved you!”
“You loved my inheritance,” I corrected her, my voice dropping to a low, razor-sharp hiss. “You loved Grandfather’s money. You loved using my father's mortgage to build Garrick’s first business. You loved buying sports cars for him while you told me that Toby’s asthma inhalers were an unnecessary luxury that I had to budget for myself.”
I took a step toward her. The deputy didn't stop me.
“Last night,” I whispered, “you handed every child in that house an envelope stuffed with cash. Lily was sitting right next to you. She had made you a handmade New Year’s card with glitter and colored pencils. She spent three days on it. You didn’t even open it. You shoved it under a stack of dirty plates and smiled when she started crying.”
Eleanor’s lips trembled. “It... it was tough love, Clara! You were always so independent, so rebellious! You never showed me the respect Garrick showed me!”
“Respect?” I laughed, a bitter, sharp sound that echoed off the brick houses. “Garrick doesn't respect you, Eleanor. Garrick used you as a legal shield. Did you know that the document you signed six days ago—the one transferring the eleven million offshore—was an indemnification clause?”
Eleanor froze, blinking through her tears. “A... what?”
“Show her, Evelyn,” I commanded.
Evelyn pulled a single page from the front of the file and held it out. “Mrs. Vance, when your son asked you to sign the authorization for the Cook Islands wire, he included a waiver of liability. It states that you, as the sole acting trustee, personally attest to the legality of the disbursement and agree to hold Garrick Vance harmless from any claims of conversion, embezzlement, or fraud. If the federal court rules this an illegal seizure—which they will—you are the one who goes to prison for grand larceny. Garrick structured the corporate entity so that he would appear to be an innocent third-party recipient.”
Eleanor turned her head slowly, looking up at her beloved golden son. Her eyes were wide, glassy, and completely shattered.
“Garrick...?” she breathed. “Is that true? You... you said it was a tax shelter for the family.”
Garrick didn't look at her. His eyes were darting wildly down the street, looking at the neighbors, looking at the moving van, looking at the cold sky.
“You signed it, Mom,” he muttered between gritted teeth. “Nobody put a gun to your head.”
The look on Eleanor’s face at that precise second was worth every single hour of overtime I had ever worked in my life. The illusion had shattered. The favorite child, the brilliant prodigy, the golden boy for whom she had starved her own daughter of affection and truth, had sold her to the federal government for eleven million dollars without blinking.
“Now,” Evelyn said, snapping her briefcase shut with a sharp, definitive click. “The locksmith is finished changing the deadbolts and the security codes on 142 Maplecrest. Mr. Vance, your personal vehicle—the Mercedes AMG—was purchased with funds traced directly to the primary trust account in March of 2021. The sheriff’s department has a writ of attachment for the vehicle. The tow truck is turning the corner right now.”
As if on cue, the yellow amber lights of a heavy-duty flatbed tow truck flashed against the trees as it backed down the residential street.
Garrick’s jaw dropped. “No! Not the car! How am I supposed to leave? How am I supposed to get back to the city?”
May you like
“There’s a bus stop on the corner of 4th and Elm,” I said, turning my back on them and walking toward the front steps of my house. “It costs two dollars and fifty cents. Make sure you have exact change, Garrick. Your cards won’t work.”
***