Chapter 9 - The Fall of the House of Ashford
The scene that unfolded in the Metropolitan Conservatory over the next twenty minutes was recorded by three private event photographers and would be discussed in the city’s high-society drawing rooms for the next twenty years.
Arthur Ashford did not leave the building through the grand glass doors.
Two officers from the State Financial Crimes Division, dressed in dark grey suits and accompanied by four uniformed state troopers, walked silently through the ballroom floor. They did not raise their voices. They did not draw their weapons. They walked straight up the marble staircase, placed Arthur Ashford’s hands behind his broad back, and clicked a pair of steel handcuffs around his wrists.
Camille Ashford let out a piercing, high-pitched scream that echoed off the high glass dome above.
"Father! Father, tell them! Tell them who we are!" she shrieked, rushing forward and grabbing Arthur’s arm as the troopers led him down the stairs. "Casius! Do something! You're a Ferraro! You own these people!"
Casius Ferraro stood at the top of the landing, his arm resting lightly behind Delaney’s waist, his face as unreadable as carved granite.
"I do own these people, Camille," Casius said as the troopers led her father past him. "And that is precisely why he is going to jail."
Camille stopped. She looked up at Casius, her eyes wild, her silver gown disheveled, her makeup smeared with tears of pure, unadulterated rage. Then her eyes drifted to Delaney Vance standing beside him.
Delaney looked down at her.
She did not smile. She did not show triumph. She did not look at Camille with hatred or malice. She looked at her with the same flat, unhurried, clinical detachment she had used when checking the four glass vials resting on the storm drain grate twenty-four hours ago.
"You..." Camille choked out, her voice trembling so violently she could barely articulate the words. "You took everything..."
"I didn't take anything, Miss Ashford," Delaney said, her voice clear, calm, and resonant in the quiet hall. "I simply picked up what you dropped on the sidewalk."
The state troopers moved Arthur Ashford through the main doors, his silver hair lowered as three news photographers from the Daily Gazette, tipped off by Gianni an hour earlier, flashed their cameras through the glass windows outside.
Camille stood alone at the foot of the grand staircase.
She looked around the vast ballroom. The two hundred guests who had spent the last three years attending her luncheons, admiring her clothes, and seeking invitations to her father’s estate were now turning their backs on her. Physicians were suddenly engaged in urgent conversations with board members; attorneys were checking their phones; ladies in velvet dresses were walking quickly toward the coat check without glancing in her direction.
Not one person stepped forward to offer her a arm or a handkerchief.
Camille let out a ragged, sob-choked breath, gathered the heavy silver train of her dress in both hands, and fled through the side exit into the rainy night, her high heels clicking a frantic, desperate rhythm against the wet pavement outside.
Inside the ballroom, the silence settled once more.
Dr. Renner stepped forward from the crowd. He cleared his throat, wiped his mouth with a linen napkin, and walked slowly up the first three marble steps. He looked up at Delaney, his face pale, his eyes filled with an awkward, humiliating desperate plea for professional preservation.
"Delaney..." Dr. Renner said, his voice forced and unnaturally warm. "Miss Vance... I... I want you to know that those of us on the medical executive committee... we were never fully aware of the financial irregularities regarding your mother’s estate. If we had known... if I had realized who you were last night..."
Delaney looked down at the senior cardiologist.
She remembered the three o'clock in the morning hallway. She remembered the stale vending machine coffee. She remembered the way he had turned his face away from the glass door while she was crawling on her knees in the cold rain.
"Dr. Renner," Delaney said softly.
"Yes, Miss Vance?" Renner said, taking another half-step up, his eyes lighting up with a sudden hope.
"Your resignation from the head of the cardiology department will be on my desk by eight o'clock tomorrow morning," Delaney said. "If it isn't, the board will begin a formal audit of your clinical trial funding for the last five years."
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Renner’s face went entirely white. He opened his mouth to protest, looked at Casius Ferraro standing half a step behind her with his hands folded neatly in front of his coat, and swallowed his words.
He bowed his head once, turned on his heel, and walked out of the conservatory into the cold night air.
