Chapter 5 - The House of Glass
When we rounded the corner of the garage, the grand paved courtyard of the estate was lit up by the flashing red and blue strobes of six police cruisers.
The double mahogany front doors of the mansion were wide open.
Two female state troopers were escorting my sister, Victoria, down the grand stone steps. She was wearing a silk pajama set, her hair in rollers, her wrists bound tightly behind her back in steel handcuffs.
"Get your hands off me!" Victoria shrieked, her voice echoing across the quiet neighborhood. "Do you know who I am?! I am Victoria Sterling! My mother owns this estate! My brother is a high-level executive overseas! He will have all your badges for this!"
"Shut up, Victoria," I said, stepping out from the shadows of the hemlocks.
Victoria froze mid-scream. Her head snapped toward me, her eyes widening in pure, paralyzed horror as she registered my presence. Her gaze shifted from my face, down to Julian in my arms, and then to Elena, who was leaning heavily against my side wrapped in my leather jacket.
"M-Marcus?" Victoria stammered, the color completely draining from her face, leaving her looking like a painted corpse. "You... you were supposed to be in Dubai until November..."
"My contract ended early, Vicky," I said, taking slow, deliberate steps toward her. "I came home to see my family. But I didn't find them in the house I bought. I found them in the dirt behind the garage."
"Marcus, listen to me!" Victoria babbled franticly, trying to step toward me, but the trooper held her firmly in place. "It's not what it looks like! Elena is sick! She lost her mind two years ago! She was violent, Marcus! She tried to hurt Julian! We put her out there for her own protection! We were trying to save your son!"
"Is that why Julian has scars on his arms from eating scraps?" I asked, my voice dropping into a register so dark that the state trooper beside Victoria instinctively took a half-step back. "Is that why you gave hot chicken to the dogs while my son begged for food through the window?"
Victoria opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She looked at Julian, whose small face was buried deep into my neck, refusing to look at her.
"Marcus!"
A high-pitched, hysterical voice echoed from the front foyer.
My mother, Evelyn, was being led out by Detective Miller. She was wearing a plum-colored velvet robe, her hands cuffed in front of her due to her age, but her expression was filled with manic, furious indignation.
"Marcus Sterling!" Evelyn screamed, her silver hair wild around her shoulders. "What is the meaning of this humiliation?! You bring these... these thugs to my home?! After everything I’ve done for you?! After everything I sacrificed to raise you?!"
I walked right up to the bottom of the stone steps, looking up at the woman who had given me life, feeling nothing in my heart except a vast, frozen void.
"Your home, Evelyn?" I asked softly. "You forged my signature on a power of attorney. You stole $480,000 of my salary. You took a $400,000 equity loan against this house to fund Victoria’s fake lifestyle."
"I managed your estate!" Evelyn spat, her face twisting into an ugly, sneering mask. "You were thousands of miles away! Someone had to maintain our family's social standing! That girl—" she pointed a shaking, manicured finger at Elena "—was a nobody from a trailer park! She was dragging the Sterling name into the mud! She didn't deserve this house! She didn't deserve your money!"
"The money wasn't yours, Evelyn," Sarah Vance said, walking out from the grand foyer behind Detective Miller, holding a thick stack of seized banking ledgers. "And neither is this house."
Evelyn’s eyes snapped to Sarah, her jaw dropping. "Sarah? You... you traitorous snake! You orchestrated this?!"
"I didn't orchestrate anything, Evelyn," Sarah said coldly, slipping her glasses into her coat pocket. "You committed sixteen counts of federal wire fraud, aggravated human trafficking, grand larceny, and felony child abuse. Federal Magistrate Hayes has already issued an emergency injunction freezing every bank account under your name, seizing Victoria’s business assets, and revoking the fraudulent deed to this property."
"You can't do this!" Evelyn screamed, struggling against Detective Miller’s grip as he guided her toward the back seat of a cruiser. "I am your mother, Marcus! You can't put your own mother in prison for a trailer-park girl!"
I looked Evelyn straight in the eyes.
"You aren't my mother," I said, every word like a stone falling into a deep well. "My mother died the day she locked my wife and son in a shed."
Detective Miller pushed Evelyn gently into the back of the cruiser and slammed the door, cutting off her frantic, muffled screaming.
The yard went silent, save for the hum of the idling police engines and the soft, steady sound of Elena weeping against my chest.
Detective Miller walked back over to me, touching his cap. "An ambulance is waiting down the street, Mr. Vance. Let's get your wife and son to St. Jude’s Hospital for a full medical evaluation."
I looked down at Elena, then at Julian, whose small hand was gripping my work shirt so tightly his knuckles were white.
"Thank you, Detective," I said quietly.
May you like
I didn't look back at the mansion as I walked toward the ambulance. The grand marble foyer, the crystal chandeliers, the six bedrooms—it meant nothing.
The battle for justice had just begun, but for the first time in five years, my family was together under the daylight.
