Chapter 5 - The Reckoning
The ballroom dissolved into whispers that sounded like a thousand dry leaves scraping across concrete.
Margaret Bennett stepped forward, her face flushed with a terrifying mix of rage and desperation.
“You can’t do this!” she screamed at Arthur Vance, her voice cracking as she lost the refined composure she had cultivated for forty years. “We gave her a home! We fed her! She was nothing before my son married her!”
Arthur Vance didn't even look at her.
He looked at Marcus.
“Marcus,” Arthur said softly. “Who is this woman?”
“Margaret Bennett, sir,” Marcus replied dutifully. “Former board member of the Westchester Arts Society. Currently under preliminary investigation by the State Attorney General for embezzling forty thousand dollars from a children’s hospital charity fund last spring.”
Margaret gasped, her hand flying to her throat as if she had been slapped.
“That... that was an administrative error!” she stammered, looking around frantically as several prominent society women in the audience quickly turned their backs on her.
“My lawyers will look into that 'error' tomorrow morning, Mrs. Bennett,” Claire said quietly, stepping up beside her grandfather. “Along with the forty-five thousand dollars you took from Andrew’s joint account last month to pay off your personal credit cards.”
Andrew stared at his mother in shock. “Mother? You took money from our operating account?”
“It was a temporary loan!” Margaret cried out, her face crumbling. “Andrew, tell them! Tell them we’re a respectable family!”
“Respectable families pay their debts, Mrs. Bennett,” Claire said.
She turned her eyes back to Andrew. He looked smaller now. Without his ninety-million-dollar buyout, without his mother’s arrogant backing, without the illusion of his self-made success, he was just a thirty-four-year-old man in an ill-fitting suit who had built an empire out of cards and stolen ideas.
“Claire...” Andrew dropped to his knees right there on the marble floor, completely indifferent to the dozens of cameras still recording his every move. He reached out, trying to grab the hem of her coat. “Claire, please. I love you. You know I love you. We can start over. We can leave Bennett Dynamics behind! We can go back to how things were at Columbia!”
Claire looked down at him.
She remembered the young man who had sat across from her in the university library six years ago, sharing a three-dollar cup of coffee and talking about building something that would change the world. She realized now that the man had never existed. He had simply seen a bright, hard-working girl with no family to defend her, and he had used her brain until he thought he didn't need it anymore.
She pulled her coat back slightly so his hand fell empty onto the cold marble.
“I left Columbia four years ago, Andrew,” Claire said softly. “And tonight, I’m leaving you.”
She turned to her grandfather.
“Can we go home now?” she asked.
Arthur Vance looked down at her, his pale grey eyes softening into something warm and protective.
“Yes, my dear,” Arthur said. “Your home has been waiting for you for twenty-two years.”
He turned his back on Andrew Bennett, offered his arm to Claire once more, and together they walked down the central aisle of the Venetian Ballroom.
May you like
As they reached the heavy oak doors, two uniformed officers from the NYPD financial crimes unit walked past them, heading straight toward Andrew, who was still kneeling in the center of the room, surrounded by melted ice and spilled champagne.
Claire did not look back.
