Chapter 10 - The Fall of the House of Herndon
The sanctuary of the Cathedral of Christ the King devolved into an amphitheater of total social and legal annihilation.
Guests were fleeing the pews in a chaotic stampede of silk, velvet, and whispered horror. Atlanta’s elite—the very people Elijah and Naomi had spent thirty years cultivating, flattering, and manipulating—pulled their coats tightly around themselves, averting their eyes as if looking upon a plague pit as they rushed toward the exits.
Reporters from the local news affiliates, who had been tipped off twenty minutes earlier by Marcus Vance’s press team, were already swarming the cathedral steps, their flashbulbs exploding through the open double doors like lightning strikes.
In the center of the transept, Elijah Herndon was brought to his knees by two burly federal marshals. His bespoke Italian suit was torn at the shoulder, his gold Montblanc pen had fallen to the floor, rolling away into the shadows beneath an altar pew.
"Do you know who I am?!" Elijah screamed, spit flying from his lips as he struggled against the steel biting into his wrists. "I am Elijah Herndon! I know the Governor! I have lunch with the Chief Judge of the Eleventh Circuit! You cannot do this to me! Jenkins, you will be disbarred for this!"
Sarah Jenkins didn't even look down at him as she fastened an evidence tag to his briefcase. "The Eleventh Circuit signed your detention warrant without bail twenty minutes ago, Elijah. The Panama accounts were frozen at noon. The Costa Rican authorities picked up your son Damian two hours ago at a hotel in Jacó. He’s already in custody, singing like a canary to save his own skin."
Elijah’s voice died in his throat. The arrogance drained from his features with the speed of water through a cracked glass, leaving behind a shriveled, terrified old man whose world had collapsed in a matter of seconds.
Nearby, Naomi was being marched down the center aisle in handcuffs. Her midnight blue gown was disheveled, her expensive pearls had snapped during her struggle with the deputies, scattering across the polished stone floor like tiny white teeth.
She caught sight of me standing by the baptismal font, my veil removed, watching her with absolute, unwavering stillness.
"You bitch!" Naomi shrieked, her voice echoing off the stained-glass depictions of saints and martyrs. "You deceitful, treacherous little gutter rat! I took you into my home! I gave you a place at our table! You owe us everything! EVERYTHING!"
"You didn't give me anything, Naomi," I said, my voice carrying with quiet, devastating authority through the emptying cathedral. "You tried to take my life, my work, and my freedom. You took Brianna’s youth and her dignity. But you will never take another thing from anyone."
Naomi lunged toward me, but the deputies yanked her backward, dragging her kicking and screaming down the center aisle, out into the blinding daylight where fifty cameras were waiting to broadcast her arrest to the entire nation.
Then, they hauled Gavin to his feet.
His face was covered in blood from his broken nose, his eyes swollen, his hair matted against his forehead. The handsome, charming prince who had swept me off my feet eighteen months ago was entirely gone. In his place stood a broken, pathetic predator stripped of his camouflage.
He looked at me, his chest heaving, his lips trembling with a mixture of disbelief, humiliation, and impotent rage.
"Alyssa..." he croaked, blood bubbling at the corner of his split lip. "Alyssa... you loved me. You loved me. We can fix this. Tell them... tell them it was a misunderstanding. Tell them it was a corporate dispute. Please... Alyssa, you can't let them take me to a federal pen. They’ll kill me in there!"
I stepped toward him, stopping just inches from his bloodied face.
I looked into his eyes—the same eyes that had watched Brianna being beaten with a stick while he calmly took a drag from a cigarette.
"You told me that once we were married, you would control my accounts," I whispered, every word a frozen dagger. "You told your mother that I trusted you. You thought I was weak because I was kind. You thought I was prey because I was successful."
I reached out, my fingers delicately plucking the white peony boutonniere from his torn lapel.
"I never loved you, Gavin," I said softly, looking him dead in the eye. "I loved a mask. And now that the mask is gone, you are just a criminal going to prison."
I tossed the flower onto the stone floor, directly beneath the heel of my shoe, and crushed it into the marble.
"Get him out of my sight," I told the marshals.
They dragged him backward, his shoes scraping against the floor, sobbing like a terrified child as the doors of the Cathedral slammed shut behind him.
The sanctuary was suddenly, profoundly quiet.
The organ had ceased. The guests were gone. Only the scent of incense, crushed flowers, and cold stone remained.
Marcus Vance walked over to me, taking a dark wool coat from a pew and gently draping it over my shoulders, covering the forty-thousand-dollar wedding gown that was now nothing more than a relic of a war that had been fought and won.
"It’s over, Alyssa," Marcus said quietly. "The property liens are recorded. Wellman Creative’s credit lines are fully secured. And Brianna’s civil settlement against the Herndon estate has already been filed with priority status."
I closed my eyes for three long seconds, feeling the tremendous, crushing weight of the last three weeks finally lift from my lungs.
May you like
"No, Marcus," I said, opening my eyes to look at the golden light filtering through the great rose window above the altar. "It’s not over. It’s just the beginning."
***
