vignette
Seven months pregnant, Laurel Pierce watched her husband’s mistress pour champagne over her dress and call her a woman with nowhere to go… / Chapter 8 / 10

Chapter 9 - The Fall of Camille

The fallout was catastrophic.

Richard Westcott was not a man to tolerate incompetence. Within forty-eight hours of discovering the land defect, Westcott Hospitality officially terminated its joint venture with Pierce Urban Holdings.

To save his company's reputation from the PR firestorm, Richard Westcott publicly dismissed his daughter, Camille, from the board of directors. A press release announced that Miss Westcott was taking an “indefinite leave of absence” to pursue private interests abroad.

Laurel watched the news broadcast from her Brooklyn living room while folding miniature cotton onesies.

The television showed Camille rushing out of her Upper East Side apartment, shielding her face from a barrage of paparazzi flashes. The glamorous, cruel heiress who had poured champagne over a pregnant woman was now a national pariah, her social standing demolished, her career inside her father’s empire erased.

Then the phone rang.

It was not Arthur Vance. It was Nolan.

Laurel answered, pressing the speakerphone button. “Yes?”

“You destroyed everything,” Nolan’s voice was ragged, slurred with alcohol. “The Westcott deal is dead. My stock crashed forty percent this morning. The board is voting to remove me as CEO next week.”

“You destroyed yourself, Nolan,” Laurel said quietly. “You treated your marriage like a hostile takeover. You thought people only existed to serve your ambition.”

“I loved you, Laurel!” he shouted, the sound breaking into a pathetic sob. “Before everything got complicated, I loved you!”

“No,” Laurel replied softly. “You loved an audience. You loved having a quiet, pretty wife who smiled at your parties and never questioned your lies. That wasn't love. It was ownership.”

“Please,” Nolan begged, the sound foreign and sickening. “Let me see you. Let me be there when the baby comes. We can start over. I’ll sell the company. We can leave New York.”

“The papers are on your desk, Nolan. Sign them. That is the only thing you will ever do for me again.”

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I stepped off a classified military transport and made my way straight to the ICU, where my wife lay with twenty-seven broken b0nes and a fractured skull. Outside her hospital room, her mother and six sisters stood smiling as if they were waiting for lunch to be served. The detective assigned to her case leaned closer and whispered, "Captain, this family practically owns the entire county." I looked through the glass at my wife's bruised, swollen face and replied, "Good. My authority reaches far beyond this county."

I stepped off a classified military transport and made my way straight t...

888Ten days after I gave birth, my mother-in-law poured a pitcher of cold water over me because I was too weak to cook dinner, and my husband stood there smirking. I didn’t scream. I made one phone call, and ten minutes later they were packing their belongings. Then the property manager opened a folder and said, “Ma’am, there’s something you need to know about these two.”

888Ten days after I gave birth, my mother-in-law poured a pitcher of col...

Eighteen years after I divorced Vincent Moretti, I watched our son step onto a Harvard stage to receive one of the highest academic honors for incoming students.

Eighteen years after I divorced Vincent Moretti, I watched our son step...

She hung up the phone and blocked his number forever.

***

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