Chapter 11 - Linda's Desperate Plea
The news of Daniel's arrest and immediate firing spread through the legal and corporate circles of Seattle like wildfire. By Friday afternoon, Marcus had delivered the sealed police affidavit to Dr. Aris Thorne and the Apex board. The forged smear campaign was completely disproven before the market closed, and Dr. Thorne personally stopped by my office to issue a formal corporate apology and an immediate grant of restricted stock options as a gesture of executive faith.
My career was safe. But the wreckage of Daniel's life was still collapsing, and Linda Vance refused to go down without a scene.
On Saturday morning, I was sitting on my townhouse balcony, drinking tea while watching Lily draw a massive blue ocean with sidewalk chalk on our private patio below. The sun broke through the autumn clouds, warming the crisp October air.
Then the courtyard intercom buzzer rang.
I walked to the kitchen console and checked the video screen. Linda stood outside the security gate.
She looked entirely unhinged. Her expensive faux-fur coat was crooked, her mascara was smeared across her hollow cheeks, and she was clutching an old designer purse to her chest like a shield. She didn't have her usual sneering poise. She looked like a woman who had just realized that her golden goose was in handcuffs.
I buzzed the gate and met her at the front door, leaving the heavy screen door locked between us.
"Emily!" Linda cried out the moment she saw me through the screen, her voice cracking with hysteria. "Emily, you have to stop this! You have to drop the charges!"
"I am not the prosecutor, Linda," I said, leaning against the doorframe, my voice calm and neutral. "The State of Washington filed the charges based on felony fraud and identity theft. I couldn't stop it even if I wanted to."
"You can tell them it was a misunderstanding!" Linda pleaded, grabbing the metal mesh of the screen with manicured, trembling fingers. "He’s facing three to five years in prison! They revoked his law license, Emily! His entire life is ruined! What kind of monster puts the father of her child in a cage?"
I let out a slow, steady breath, looking at this woman who had spent six years belittling my existence.
"Where was this concern for family when Daniel threatened to divorce me eighteen times, Linda?" I asked. "Where was your compassion when he left me stranded with a screaming infant to go golfing? Where was your family loyalty when you stood in my kitchen and told me I was nothing more than an unpaid maid?"
"He was stressed!" Linda shrieked, tears carving dirty streaks through her foundation. "Men say things! A good wife protects her husband! Look at this home you have! Look at this neighborhood! You have everything, and Daniel is sitting in a King County holding cell! Have you no mercy?"
"I had mercy for six years," I replied softly. "I gave you six years of free labor, six years of endured insults, and six years of swallowing my dignity so you could brag to your country club friends about your successful son. You didn't raise a successful man, Linda. You raised a spoiled bully who thought women were disposable toys he could discard whenever he was angry."
"He is Lily's father!" she sobbed.
"And he will be Lily's father from a supervised visitation center once he completes his sentence," I said. "And as for you, Linda... you are no longer welcome in our lives. If you step onto this property again, I will have you served with a formal restraining order."
"You're heartless," Linda spat, her desperation curdling back into venom. "A heartless, ungrateful little bitch."
"No, Linda," I smiled, a genuine, radiant smile. "I'm just a mother who finally learned how to close the door on wolves."
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I pushed the heavy mahogany door shut, turned the deadbolt with a satisfying click, and walked back out onto the sunlit patio to help Lily finish her ocean.
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