Chapter 9 - The Scales of Justice
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
The heavy oak double doors at the back of the grand chapel were thrown open once again.
This time, it was not wedding guests or musicians who entered.
A tactical squad of twelve Federal Marshals, dressed in dark blue tactical vests bearing gold federal badges, marched down the center aisle in precise, disciplined formation. Leading them was Senior Federal Prosecutor Julian Vance, carrying a thick leather briefcase, his expression carved from stone.
The federal agents parted the panic-stricken crowd, marching straight to the altar space.
Julian Vance stepped up onto the marble platform, pulling a stack of federal arrest warrants from his coat pocket. He stood between Ethan, my father, and Rachel.
"Richard Bennett," Prosecutor Vance announced, his voice amplified by a portable federal megaphone that echoed over the chapel noise. "Eleanor Bennett, Ethan Carter, and Rachel Bennett. You are all under federal arrest."
Two federal agents immediately stepped up behind my father, grabbing his arms and pulling them behind his back.
"You can't do this!" my father screamed, struggling wildly against the steel cuffs as they snapped around his wrists. "Do you know who I am?! I am the Chairman of Bennett Holdings! I have political immunity in this state!"
"You had political immunity, Mr. Bennett," Julian Vance replied coldly. "Until two hours ago, when a federal grand jury reviewed your signed financial extortion contracts, your offshore money-laundering accounts, and the physical evidence of felony hit-and-run concealment. You are being charged with federal racketeering, evidence tampering, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy to commit civil rights violations."
My mother shrieked as female federal agents lifted her from the pew, snapping handcuffs over her manicured wrists. "Emily! Tell them to stop! We are your parents! We did this for the family!"
I stood three feet away from her, my arms crossed over my ivory lace gown, my eyes cold and unmoving.
"You didn't do this for the family, Eleanor," I said, dropping the word 'Mom' forever. "You did this for yourselves. And now you can pay for it together."
Two agents grabbed Ethan, pulling him up from the altar rail. He looked at me with frantic, weeping, desperate eyes, his white tuxedo rumpled, his hair messy.
"Emily... please!" Ethan sobbed, reaching out his cuffed hands toward me. "I loved you! I really loved you! I was just trying to protect everyone! I can change... we can still make this work... please tell the prosecutor to drop the charges!"
I walked up to Ethan. I stopped six inches away from his weeping face. I looked into his eyes with a cold, terrifying stillness that made him freeze.
I reached up, picked the white rose boutonnière from his tuxedo lapel, and dropped it onto the floor. I crushed it beneath the heel of my wedding shoe.
"You kept me in the dark for three years, Ethan," I whispered into his ear. "Now, you can spend the next twenty years sitting in a dark prison cell thinking about what I saw today."
The agents slammed Ethan forward, dragging him down the aisle alongside my father and mother.
Finally, two agents lifted Rachel from the floor. She was hyperventilating, her makeup smeared across her face, screaming hysterically as the steel cuffs clicked around her wrists.
"It was Ethan's idea!" Rachel shrieked, pointing her cuffed hands at Ethan as they dragged him away. "He told me to run her down! He told me he would fix the police reports! I'm innocent! I'm the victim here!"
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"Save it for the federal judge, Miss Bennett," Prosecutor Vance said coldly as the agents dragged her out of the chapel into the bright afternoon sun, where dozens of police cruisers with flashing red and blue lights were waiting.
The four hundred guests watched in absolute, stunned silence as my entire family and my fiancé were marched out in chains, surrounded by media cameras snapping thousands of photos that would grace every newspaper front page in the world tomorrow morning.
