Chapter 9 - The Deposition from Hell
Two months later, the cold marble and neon drama of the courthouse had transitioned into the suffocating, wood-paneled finality of Conference Room A at Sterling & Croft.
Fallon’s legal defense had completely collapsed.
Chloe Davenport, facing twenty-five years for federal drug distribution and criminal facilitation, had accepted a plea bargain thirty-six hours after her arrest. She had turned state’s evidence, handing over two gigabytes of voice memos, encrypted text chains, and receipts proving that Fallon had paid her five thousand dollars cash for the trichloroacetic acid bottle.
Now, Fallon sat across the heavy mahogany table from me, wearing a drab green county jumpsuit, flanked by two armed deputies and a public defender whose exhausted expression signaled that he knew he had zero cards left to play.
Her multi-thousand-dollar extensions had been removed, leaving her hair thin and limp. Her skin was dull, stripped of the professional chemical treatments and luxury serums she had stolen my father’s money to buy.
Beside her, Sibil sat in a wheelchair, broken by two months in the medical annex of the women’s detention center.
I sat opposite them. The compression bandages were gone, replaced by a light medical silicone patch protecting the neat, surgical reconstruction line where Dr. Chen had performed a flawless skin grafting procedure. My face would always bear a subtle, silver shadow along the contour of my cheekbone—a permanent battle stripe—but the sight of it did not bring me shame. It brought me power.
Mark Sterling laid a heavy, three-hundred-page leather-bound binding onto the table with a dull, heavy thud.
“This is the final forensic audit of the Arthur Ward Estate,” Mark began, his voice cutting through the silent room like a scalpel. “Over the past forty-eight months, Sibil Ward and Fallon Ward have misappropriated six million, four hundred and twenty-two thousand dollars from the Ward Logistics Trust.”
Mark opened the first tab.
“They spent one point two million on luxury automotive leases. Eight hundred thousand on international private aviation. One point four million on promotional social media agency fees, luxury designer clothing, and high-end medspa treatments. And two million on securing the lease option on the Alpharetta property to lure Julian Vance into a fraudulent marriage.”
Fallon’s public defender cleared his throat nervously. “My clients are prepared to sign an absolute confession of judgment for the entire civil liability amount. In exchange, we are requesting that Ms. Sloan Ward submit a formal victim impact statement recommending a sentence of no more than three years in a minimum-security camp.”
I leaned forward, resting my forearms on the table.
“No,” I said.
The public defender flinched. “Ms. Ward, this confession of judgment will restore every penny of your father’s estate to your sole control. You will own the entire logistics terminal outright.”
“I already own the logistics terminal,” I replied, my voice cool, steady, and utterly devoid of pity. “Judge Holloway’s receivership order executed that transfer forty-eight hours ago. You aren’t giving me anything, Counselor. You are simply acknowledging what you stole.”
I turned my eyes directly onto my mother.
“Sibil, you signed the fraudulent quitclaim deed. You committed felony forgery against a deceased veteran’s estate. Under the state’s plea offer, you will plead guilty to three counts of Grand Larceny. You will serve five years at Lee Arrendale State Prison, followed by ten years of strict supervised probation. The family home in Buckhead will be sold at public auction on Friday morning to settle back taxes and restitution.”
Sibil let out a dry, broken sob, her hands trembling as she pulled her institutional cardigan around her shoulders. “Sloan... my home... your father built that house for us...”
“Dad built that house for his children,” I corrected. “Not for a thief who tried to erase his eldest daughter’s existence.”
I shifted my gaze to Fallon.
Fallon began to shake, her breaths coming in ragged, terrified gasps. “Sloan... please... what about me? You can't let them lock me away for decades... I’ll die in there... I don’t know how to survive in a place like that!”
“You should have calculated the risk before you filled that crystal glass, Fallon,” I said, opening my personal laptop.
I spun the screen to show her the final sentencing agreement negotiated with the Fulton County District Attorney.
“Ten years in state prison. Day for day. No parole eligibility until eighty-five percent of the sentence has been served under Georgia’s Serious Violent Felon statute. Followed by a lifetime ban on commercial social media activity, and a permanent civil injunction requiring one hundred percent of any future income you ever generate to be garnished until my medical reconstruction bills—currently totaling three hundred and forty thousand dollars—are paid in full.”
“Ten years?!” Fallon shrieked, slamming her shackled hands onto the mahogany table. The two deputies instantly stepped forward, their hands on their tasers. “Ten years?! I’m twenty-four years old! My youth will be gone! My career will be dead!”
“Your career was a fantasy built on stolen money and manufactured lies,” I told her, my voice dropping into an intimate, deadly whisper. “You wanted to show your followers what a high-value life looked like? Now you can spend the next decade showing the women at Pulaski State Prison how to scrub laundry floors.”
I slid the gold Montblanc pen across the table. It rolled smoothly, coming to a halt directly against Fallon’s shaking handcuffs.
“Sign the plea agreement, Fallon. Or we go to trial on Monday morning. And I will sit in the front row while Mark Sterling plays the 4K slow-motion footage of you throwing acid in my face for twelve jurors who make thirty thousand dollars a year.”
Fallon looked from the pen to the document, then to her public defender, who slowly shook his head, signaling that there was no way out.
May you like
With a ragged, broken scream of defeat, Fallon snatched the pen, her hand trembling so violently that the ink tore through the paper as she signed her name into oblivion.
***
