Chapter 17 - The Desperate MotherMargaret Vance was a ghost of her former self.
After her eviction from the Oakhaven estate, and with her son in prison, Margaret’s social standing had evaporated overnight. She had gone from sipping expensive tea on a wraparound porch to chain-smoking in a rundown trailer park on the outskirts of the city. Her designer clothes were moth-eaten, her bank accounts permanently overdrawn.
When Officer Miller knocked on her aluminum door, handing her a burner phone with a recorded message from Ethan, her eyes lit up with a deranged, vindictive fire.
"He wants the boy," Miller explained nervously, standing in her cramped living room. "He says you can get us into the gala."
"Of course I can," Margaret hissed, a twisted smile stretching across her wrinkled face. "Claire thinks she’s untouchable now. Parading around with her foundation, playing the saint. But I know her. She’s weak. She’s always been weak."
Margaret walked over to a dusty closet and pulled out the only piece of her old life she had kept: a tailored, black evening gown.
"The gala is at the St. Regis Hotel," Margaret said, her mind working furiously. "Her father, the Colonel, handles her security. He’s tough, but he’s old. We don't need to fight him. We just need to distract him."
The plan was simple and vicious. Margaret would use a forged invitation—courtesy of Miller’s underworld contacts—to enter the gala. She would cause a massive, public disturbance, drawing all security personnel, including my father, to the main ballroom.
In the chaos, Miller, dressed as a hotel maintenance worker, would slip into the VIP childcare suite on the second floor and take Leo.
"We drop the boy at the shipping yard," Miller said, repeating Ethan's instructions. "A crew will take him across the border. We take the safety deposit key and disappear."
"I don't care about the money," Margaret sneered, zipping up the garment bag. "I just want to see the look on Claire’s face when she realizes her precious empire couldn't protect her son."
But Margaret had made a fatal miscalculation.
She assumed I was still the woman she had abused.
Back at the Oakhaven estate, my father was sitting at his massive oak desk in the library, staring at his laptop. As a former military intelligence officer, he had left nothing to chance. For five years, he had paid a private investigator to keep a digital wiretap on Margaret’s known associates and run background checks on every guard in Ethan’s cell block.
My father’s phone buzzed. It was an encrypted text from his PI.
Massive ping on Margaret Vance’s location. She just received a visitor. Vehicle plates trace back to a correctional officer at State Pen. Name: Miller. Heavy gambling debts.
My father didn't flinch. He simply printed the report, walked into the living room where I was reviewing the gala’s seating chart, and placed it on the table.
"They’re making a move," my father said quietly.
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I looked at the report. I didn't feel the suffocating panic I would have felt five years ago. Instead, my blood ran cold, turning to absolute ice.
"Let them come," I said, a dangerous calm settling over me. "It's time to end this bloodline for good."
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