Chapter 7 - The Courtroom
Three days after the false CPS report, Donna was arrested.
It happened at 6:47 AM on a Thursday morning, according to the police report Patricia Chen obtained for me later that day. Two officers knocked on the door of Donna's penthouse apartment—the one she was apparently sixty days from losing—and informed her that she was being charged with filing a false report to Child Protective Services, aggravated harassment, and contempt of a court order.
Donna, in characteristic fashion, did not go quietly.
According to the officers' account, she screamed. She cursed. She called them "minimum-wage thugs" and threatened to have their badges. She slammed the door in their faces and refused to come out for forty-five minutes, during which time she apparently called every attorney in her phone contacts, none of whom were willing to represent her on such short notice—or at all, given the viral notoriety of her situation.
When she finally emerged, she was wearing a silk blouse, designer slacks, and a pair of sunglasses large enough to land a helicopter on. She held out her wrists with theatrical dignity and said, "I want everyone to know that this is a witch hunt orchestrated by my mentally unstable sister and a billionaire who wants to sleep with her."
The officers, to their eternal credit, said nothing. They handcuffed her, read her her rights, and drove her to the county jail, where she was booked, fingerprinted, and photographed.
Her mugshot leaked within the hour.
I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I saw it. Donna, who had spent her entire life cultivating an image of perfection—the perfect hair, the perfect makeup, the perfect wardrobe—stared out from the booking photo with smeared mascara, wild eyes, and a expression of such pure, concentrated fury that she looked like a different person entirely. The internet, predictably, went insane.
"BOUQUET BULLY ARRESTED," screamed the headlines. "Wedding Villain Faces Criminal Charges After Filing False CPS Report Against Disabled Niece's Mother." The mugshot was memed within minutes. Someone photoshopped her holding a bouquet behind bars. Someone else created a side-by-side comparison of her glamorous Instagram photos and the booking photo with the caption, "Expectation vs. Reality."
I should have felt vindicated. Part of me did. But a larger part of me felt hollow, because this was still my sister. This was still the girl who had shared a bedroom with me until I was twelve, who had taught me how to braid my hair, who had once carried me home on her back when I twisted my ankle at summer camp. Somewhere beneath the cruelty and the narcissism, that girl still existed. Or maybe she didn't. Maybe she never had. Maybe I had been telling myself a comforting story all along, editing out the warning signs, softening the memories, because the alternative—that my sister had always been this person—was too painful to accept.
Donna was released on bail six hours later. Her bail was set at fifty thousand dollars, which she apparently scraped together by liquidating what remained of her investment portfolio. Patricia Chen called me with the details.
"She's been assigned a public defender," Patricia said. "Her name is Claire Nguyen. She's competent but overwhelmed. She handles about forty cases at any given time. Donna is not going to get the kind of representation she's accustomed to."
"What happens next?"
"Preliminary hearing in two weeks. Given the evidence—the phone records tying her to the anonymous CPS complaint, the text messages, the restraining order violation—I'd be surprised if the DA doesn't push for a plea deal. But Donna doesn't strike me as someone who takes plea deals."
Patricia was right about that. Donna, even now, even with her life in ruins, could not bring herself to admit that she had done anything wrong.
I know this because she called me from a burner phone the day after her arrest. I shouldn't have answered—the number was unfamiliar, and I had been letting unknown calls go to voicemail for weeks. But something made me pick up, some instinct or premonition, and Donna's voice filled my ear before I could hang up.
"Sarah, you need to drop these charges. Right now. Today."
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"Donna, you're not supposed to be contacting me. This is a violation of the restraining order."
"I don't care about the restraining order! Do you have any idea what you're doing to me? Do you have any idea what it's like to be arrested