Chapter 4 - The Wrath of Arthur Vance
The kitchen seemed to shrink the moment my father walked in.
Arthur Vance was a legend in American jurisprudence—a man whose legal opinions were studied in every law school in the country, whose presence alone could quiet a room full of arrogant senators. But right now, he wasn't a Supreme Court Justice. He was a terrified, furious father looking at his only daughter lying on a kitchen floor in a pool of pain.
He dropped to his knees beside the stretcher, ignoring the EMTs working around me, and gently cupped my face in his large, warm hands.
“Anna,” he breathed, his voice cracking for the first time in thirty years. “I’m here, sweetheart. I’ve got you.”
“Dad... the baby,” I sobbed, the last of my armor finally cracking now that I was safe.
“The baby is going to be fine. The best doctors in the state are waiting at Washington General. They’re clearing the trauma wing right now,” he said, pressing a kiss to my forehead before standing up slowly.
When my father turned around, his expression hardened into something terrifying. The warmth vanished, replaced by the crushing weight of absolute, unyielding judicial fury.
He didn't look at David first. He looked at Sylvia, who was shrinking back against the dining room table like a cornered rat.
“So,” my father said, his voice dropping to a low, lethal register that made the police officer step back instinctively. “You’re the mother.”
Sylvia swallowed hard, her voice trembling with misplaced defiance. “Listen to me, whoever you are—she provoked us! She’s lazy! She refused to cook properly, she’s ungrateful, and she tripped over her own feet! You can’t just come into someone’s home—"
“My name is Arthur Vance,” my father interrupted softly.
Sylvia stopped dead. The name hung in the air like a falling guillotine. Her eyes darted from my father’s sharp, aristocratic features to David, who was currently standing in handcuffs against the refrigerator.
“Vance?” Sylvia whispered, color entirely abandoning her face. “The... the Justice? But... David said she was an orphan! He said she had nobody!”
“David made a grave error in legal research,” my father said coldly. He turned his piercing gaze to the police officer. “Officer, ensure Mr. Sterling is booked under every applicable statute for domestic abuse, reckless endangerment, and destruction of communication devices to prevent reporting a crime. And make sure the magistrate knows I will personally be reviewing the arraignment.”
“Understood, Justice Vance,” the officer replied promptly, guiding a weeping, pathetic David toward the front door.
As David was hauled past the Christmas tree, past the half-carved turkey, and out into the flashing lights of the patrol car, he caught my eye one last time. There was no arrogance left in him. Only a shivering, pathetic realization of what he had thrown away for the sake of petty cruelty and social climbing.
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“Let’s move,” the lead paramedic said, locking the stretcher into place.
My father gripped the side of the gurney, walking right beside me as they wheeled me out of the house I had endured for three agonizing years. As the cold night air hit my face, I looked back at the house—at the little American flag magnet on the fridge, at the warm glowing lights of a Christmas that had just destroyed an empire built on lies.
