Chapter 5 - A Mother’s Silence, A Monster’s Threat
Victoria took a step back, her heel catching on the hem of her cashmere coat. She almost stumbled, but Chloe grabbed her arm, steadying her. Chloe’s bored expression had evaporated, replaced by a tight, feral grimace.
"Julian, you've completely lost your mind," Chloe snapped, stepping in front of her sister. "You work eighteen hours a day in that dark office, staring at numbers until you hallucinate conspiracies! Harrison is a professional. Victoria is your wife! How dare you accuse her of stealing pocket change from maid staff?"
"Pocket change?"
The voice didn't come from me.
It came from Rosa.
Rosa had stood up. For three years, she had been an invisible ghost in this house—quietly picking up discarded wine glasses, wiping lipstick off crystal flutes, scrubbing mud off Chloe’s designer boots after wild nights in West Hollywood. But now, clutching the twelve thousand dollars against her chest, Rosa walked forward until she stood right beside me.
"It wasn't pocket change to us, Miss Chloe," Rosa said. Her voice wasn't loud, but it had an iron weight that silenced the room. "That pocket change paid for my daughter’s insulin when she was diagnosed last year. That pocket change was the rent that kept a roof over our heads. While you were buying five-thousand-dollar bottles of champagne, I was drinking tap water for dinner so Camila could eat canned soup."
"Shut up!" Chloe shrieked, her face twisting in rage. "You are an hourly employee! Know your place! Julian, fire this woman right now! Have security drag her out by her hair!"
"Touch her," I said, looking Chloe dead in the eye, "and you will be in handcuffs before she reaches the porch."
Chloe froze, her jaw hanging open.
Victoria finally found her voice, though it sounded reedy and frail. "Julian... please. Let's go upstairs. Let's speak in private. This is a family matter. You cannot air our private lives in front of... of them."
"The people you call 'them' are the only ones in this house who have earned an honest dollar," I said.
I turned back to Rosa and Camila. "Rosa, my personal driver, Marcus, is waiting outside by the black Escalade. He is going to drive you and Camila directly to your apartment. You will pay Mr. Collins every dollar of rent you owe him tonight. If he gives you even one word of disrespect, Marcus will handle it. Tomorrow morning, a moving truck will arrive at your building to relocate you both to the company-owned residential brownstone in Pasadena. Your rent is paid for life. Your salary is doubled. And Camila’s education will be funded through college via my private foundation."
Rosa’s knees buckled. Tears spilled freely down her cheeks. "Mr. Vance... no... God bless you, sir, but why? Why would you do this for us?"
"Because your daughter was the only person in this thirty-million-dollar tomb who had the courage to speak the truth," I answered.
Camila looked up at me, her eyes shining with tears, but a faint, triumphant smile broke across her small face. She threw her arms around my waist in a tight, sudden hug. For the first time in ten years, the heavy, suffocating emptiness in my chest lifted.
"Thank you, Julian," she whispered.
"Go with Marcus, sweetheart," I told her, patting her shoulder. "Your mom is safe now."
As Marcus escorted Rosa and Camila through the side entrance, the front doors clicked shut. The warmth left the room, replaced by the chilling reckoning that was long overdue.
I turned back to Victoria, Chloe, and Harrison.
"The police will be here in eight minutes," I said coldly.
"Julian, no!" Victoria lunged forward, grabbing the lapels of my suit jacket. Tears—real or theatrical, I no longer cared—welled in her green eyes. "You cannot do this to me! Think of our social standing! Think of the Vance name! I only did it because Chloe was in danger! The men she owed money to in New York... they threatened her! They were going to break her legs, Julian! I couldn't come to you, you were already auditing our personal accounts!"
"So you stole from Rosa?" I pulled her hands off my lapels with pure disgust. "You stole from Maria? You stole from Carlos, whose son is fighting leukemia? You let an eight-year-old boy miss his chemotherapy payments because your sister couldn't stop snorting cocaine and funding illegal underground art auctions in Manhattan?"
Chloe gasped, turning white as a sheet. "How did you know about—"
"I am Julian Vance," I said, my voice echoing off the high ceilings. "I track financial crimes across sovereign nations for breakfast. Did you really think you two amateur socialites and an overpaid butler could outsmart my forensic accountants once I started digging?"
Harrison suddenly made a break for the side corridor toward the service garage.
"Stop him," I commanded.
The two security guards moved like lightning. Within three seconds, Harrison was pinned face-down against the cold marble floor, his silver glasses flying across the stone and shattering against the base of a bronze statue.
"Let me go!" Harrison spat, his face pressed into the floor. "Victoria signed the transfers! She gave me thirty percent of every dollar! She's the mastermind! Look at her phone! Look at the encrypted chat on her Signal app!"
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Victoria let out a bloodcurdling scream. "Harrison, you traitor! You promised you had wiped the servers!"
"Nobody wipes my servers," I said coldly, pulling out my phone as the faint wail of police sirens began to echo through the canyon drive outside. "Not in my house."
