Chapter 7 - Brooke’s Downfall
By the following Tuesday, Brooke Pendelton’s carefully curated fantasy world had completely disintegrated.
She had spent forty-eight hours barricaded inside her luxury high-rise apartment, surviving on takeout food and watching her social media accounts fill with horrified comments. The video of Arthur being handcuffed outside the Oakridge estate had been uploaded to local neighborhood forums and had quickly gone viral across the city's socialite community.
Her phone rang continuously. It wasn't high-society friends inviting her to brunch; it was collection agencies, credit card companies, and the furious suppliers who had provided decor for her never-to-open salon.
At ten in the morning, a loud, relentless knocking rattled her front door.
"Go away!" Brooke screamed from her sofa, clutching a bottle of white wine. "I don't have to talk to anyone!"
"Brooke Pendelton, this is Detective Miller with the Metro Economic Crimes Unit," a booming voice answered through the door. "Open this door immediately, or we will have the building superintendent use the master key."
Brooke gasped, dropping her wine glass onto the plush cream rug. She scrambled to her feet, running toward her bedroom, thinking frantically of escape. But she lived on the fourteenth floor. There was nowhere to go.
The front door clicked, swung open, and three police officers accompanied by Detective Miller strode into the apartment.
"Brooke Pendelton?" Detective Miller asked, holding up a laminated warrant. "You are under arrest for grand larceny, identity theft, and corporate bank fraud."
"No! No, you have the wrong person!" Brooke screamed, backing away until she hit the kitchen island. "It was Arthur! Arthur told me to use that tax number! Arthur said Clara approved it! I didn't do anything wrong!"
"You signed Clara Vance-Pendelton's name on a sixty-thousand-dollar commercial equipment lease and attempted to cash an unauthorized bank draft for forty thousand dollars," Miller stated flatly, while a female officer stepped forward and pinned Brooke’s hands behind her back.
"It was family money!" Brooke wailed, the handcuffs clicking around her wrists. "She’s my sister-in-law! She’s rich! She has millions of dollars! Why should she have everything while I have nothing? It’s not fair!"
"Save your defense for the arraignment, Miss Pendelton," Miller said coldly.
As they led Brooke down the hallway toward the freight elevator, two process servers were waiting in the lobby.
"Miss Pendelton," one of them announced cheerfully, handing an envelope to the arresting officer. "This is a notice of immediate repossession for the luxury BMW parked in space 42, which was leased under a fraudulent corporate account, and an eviction notice from the landlord for non-payment of rent."
Brooke began to hyperventilate. Her luxury car was gone. Her apartment was gone. Her salon was an impossibility. Her designer clothes and fake jewelry would be sold off to satisfy court judgments.
When they brought her out through the glass lobby doors, a small crowd of building residents and neighbors were standing on the sidewalk, filming her with their phones.
Brooke tried to hide her face behind her shackled hands, but the camera flashes were relentless. She had spent five years treating everyone in that building like second-class citizens, boasting about her brother's wealth and her aristocratic connections. Now, they watched her walk into the back of a police van in dirty sweatpants, sobbing like a child.
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In the back of the transport van, sitting in the darkness, Brooke finally realized the horrifying truth: Clara hadn't just defeated Arthur. She had dismantled every single member of the Pendelton family who had ever dared to treat her with cruelty.
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