The judge frowned, clearly baffled by my immediate surrender, but he had no legal grounds to force me to fight. He banged his gavel.
“So ordered,” Judge Harrison declared, signing the preliminary transfer documents. “The petitioners are granted executorship.”
As I stood up, smoothing the skirt of my suit, I could hear Beatrice and Chloe laughing loudly in the hallway outside the courtroom doors. They were bragging to their lawyers about how easily the ‘weak little wife’ had surrendered her fortune without a fight. They thought they had just secured tens of millions of dollars.
They were completely, blissfully unaware that as I walked calmly out the side exit of the courthouse, I was already dialing the direct, secure line for the Criminal Investigation Division of the Internal Revenue Service.
3. The Architecture of Ruin
It was midnight. The city below my sleek, newly leased, high-security apartment was quiet, a sea of glittering lights stretching out to the horizon.
In the adjoining room, my daughter Lily was sleeping soundly, completely safe and entirely unaware of the storm currently brewing across town.