Chapter 15 - The Price Paid|
Outside the county courthouse, the once-mighty Patricia Vale collapsed onto a stone bench in the hallway. Her arrogance was completely gone, her polished facade shattered into dust. Her prized three-carat diamond rings were missing from her fingers—sold off days earlier to cover her spiraling legal bills.
Brandon stood near the exit doors like a hollow shell of a man. Outside the glass, three men in dark leather jackets were leaning against a black sedan, watching his every move. The underground loan sharks had arrived. They didn't care about family court verdicts; they only cared about their two million dollars.
As Emily and I walked past them toward the exit, Patricia looked up at us with bloodshot, desperate eyes.
“Margaret... please...” Patricia whimpered, reaching out a trembling hand to grab the hem of my coat. “For the sake of our families’ history... help us. They’re going to kill my son.”
I stopped, looking down at the woman who had once forced my heavily pregnant daughter to scrub red wine off a carpet.
“Oh, don’t stress yourself out too much, Patricia,” I said, mimicking her exact words from the baby shower with an icy smile. “Kneeling on the floor must be wonderful exercise for a woman your age.”
I pulled my coat away from her grasp, linked my arm through Emily’s, and walked out into the bright afternoon sunlight without looking back.
The collapse of the Vale empire was swift and brutal. Within seventy-two hours, Vale Real Estate officially declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Their multi-million-dollar estate in Greenwich was seized by the bank and auctioned off on the courthouse steps.
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A week later, Brandon was jumped in a dark parking garage by enforcement thugs sent by his lenders, ending up in the intensive care unit with two broken legs. Patricia was forced to move into a tiny, dilapidated studio apartment on the far outskirts of the city, living off government assistance.
Their bottomless greed had consumed them entirely, leaving them with nothing.
