Chapter 2 - The Iron Queen’s Counterattack
While we sped north through the dark, back in the sprawling limestone condo on the Gold Coast, panic was giving way to calculated fury.
Diane Bennett sat in her high-backed velvet armchair, a wet compress pressed against her hip where she had slammed into the dining table. Her silver hair was slightly disheveled, but her eyes—hard, sharp, and predatory—were fixed on her son, who was pacing back and forth across the imported Turkish rug with his phone pressed to his ear.
"She blocked me, Brooke," Jason snapped, his voice cracking with the frantic, pathetic panic of a man who had never made a decision without consulting his mother first. "Her phone goes straight to voicemail. She’s not answering her sister, she’s not answering her friends. She’s gone."
Brooke paced behind him, clutching a glass of cold tap water. Her designer blouse was still slightly stained with the brown soup Lily’s bowl had spilled. "I told you she was dangerous, Jason! I told you the day you married her that she was just a gold-digging nobody from Oak Park looking for a free ride in our family’s trust!"
"Shut up, Brooke!" Diane hissed, her voice cutting through the room like a razor. She lowered the compress from her hip, her face tightening with a vicious grimace. "Your brother is right to be worried, but not about the police. If Emily goes to a lawyer with half the things she’s sat here and swallowed over the last three years... she could drag our name through every court in Cook County."
Jason stopped pacing, his face draining of color. "Lawyer? Emily doesn't have any money. She hasn't worked since Lily was born. Everything she spends, she asks me for."
"Fools," Diane spat, slamming her palm against the arm of her chair. "You think because she didn't spend money, she wasn't keeping score? Did you see the look in her eyes when she slapped you, Jason? That wasn't the look of a frightened wife. That was the look of a sniper taking aim."
Jason swallowed hard, his hands trembling as he shoved his glasses back onto his nose—the same nose where my wedding ring had left a faint, stinging red welt. "What do we do, Mom? If she files for divorce and claims... you know... what happened with Lily..."
"We control the narrative," Diane said smoothly, standing up with a sudden, rigid grace that belied her sixty-two years. She walked over to the mahogany secretary desk, unlocked a hidden drawer with a small brass key, and pulled out a leather-bound journal. "We go on the offensive. We paint her as an unstable, unhinged mother who suffered a severe postpartum psychotic break tonight. We tell everyone she attacked me, threw our birthday cake, and fled into the night with my granddaughter."
Brooke’s eyes lit up with malicious glee. "Oh, that is brilliant! I already have the livestream footage from my phone before I dropped it. The last ten seconds show her screaming and you falling over the chair, Mom. If we crop out the part where you hit the kid—"
"Nobody hit anyone," Diane corrected her coldly, her gaze fixing on her daughter with chilling authority. "The child knocked over her bowl, Emily threw a violent, methamphetamine-style rage, attacked her husband, struck me, and absconded with my grandchild. Call Marcus Vance."
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Jason stared at his mother in horror. "Marcus Vance? Mom, he’s the most ruthless divorce attorney in the state. He charges two thousand dollars an hour!"
"I don't care if he charges ten thousand," Diane snarled, her eyes narrowing into cold slits. "Destroy her before she destroys us."
