Chapter 7 - The Unraveling of Rebecca Vance
With David remanded to the Nashua Street Jail without bail for violating his protective order, Rebecca Vance was left entirely alone in the crumbling, drafty mansion in Chestnut Hill.
The illusion of her life had evaporated.
The social invitations that used to clog her antique secretary desk stopped arriving. The society ladies at the Chilton Club suddenly found their calendars fully booked whenever she entered the dining room. When she attempted to host her annual committee tea for the Boston Symphony, only two people RSVP’d—and both were polite regrets.
On a cold, gray Tuesday morning, Rebecca did something she had sworn she would never do: she came to my office at Carter, Sterling & Vance (the firm having long dropped any association with her late husband's distant cousins).
She sat across from my desk in my corner office overlooking Boston Harbor. Without her makeup professionally applied, she looked every day of her sixty-one years. Her hands, devoid of the diamond rings she had already pawned to pay David’s mounting legal bills, trembled around her leather handbag.
"Elena," Rebecca began, her voice cracked and stripped of its former aristocratic veneer. "I know we have had our differences."
"We haven't had differences, Rebecca," I replied without looking up from the contract I was reviewing. "You raised a violent criminal, helped him abuse my child, and laundered stolen money through your personal foundation."
Rebecca winced as if struck. "David is sick. He needs rehabilitation, not prison! If he goes to state prison, he will be destroyed! You know what happens to men like him in those places!"
"He should have considered that before he used his fists to communicate," I said, setting my pen down and leaning back in my leather chair.
"I will give you whatever you want," Rebecca pleaded, leaning forward across the desk, tears finally breaking through her mascara. "The divorce... we won't contest it. Maya can have the house in Wellesley. She can have the car. She can have every stick of furniture. Just talk to the District Attorney. Tell them Maya doesn't want to testify. Tell them this was a family misunderstanding that got out of hand!"
I looked at Rebecca Vance for a long, quiet minute.
I saw a woman who had spent her entire existence trading on vanity, cruelty, and the subjugation of other women. She had been abused by her own husband thirty years ago, and instead of breaking the cycle, she had weaponized it. She had trained her only son to be her attack dog, teaching him that women were things to be broken, subdued, and exploited so that she could maintain her precarious perch on the social ladder.
"Do you remember what you said at The Copper Lantern, Rebecca?" I asked softly.
Rebecca swallowed hard, lowering her eyes. "Elena, please... I was in shock..."
"You weren't in shock. You smiled. You clapped your hands like a spectator at a circus. You said, *'That's my boy. A woman needs to know her place.'*"
I leaned forward, resting my forearms on the desk.
"Well, Rebecca, you were right about one thing. A woman *does* need to know her place."
Rebecca looked up, a faint, desperate flicker of hope igniting in her eyes. "Yes... yes, exactly, Elena—"
"And my place," I continued, cutting through her words like a surgeon's scalpel, "is standing between my daughter and the monsters who try to devour her. My place is ensuring that men who hurt women face the absolute, unyielding wrath of the law. And your place, Rebecca, is at the defense table next to your son."
I slid an envelope across the desk toward her.
Rebecca looked down at it with trembling fingers. "What is this?"
"A summons," I said. "The Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office has formally indicted you on three counts of conspiracy, grand larceny, and filing false corporate tax returns related to the funds stolen from Maya's trust. You have seventy-two hours to turn yourself in at the Suffolk County Courthouse."
Rebecca stared at the blue legal backing of the indictment. The paper began to shake violently in her hands.
"You... you destroyed us," she whispered, her voice choking on bile. "You destroyed my family."
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"No, Rebecca," I said, rising to my feet and opening the heavy mahogany door of my office. "You destroyed yourselves. We just stopped letting you hide the wreckage."
***
