Chapter 7 - The Desperate Mother
With Everett and Madison locked away in the Metropolitan Correctional Center awaiting trial, Patricia Vance was left entirely alone in the world.
Without Everett’s corporate credit cards or the allowance I had quietly provided her for a decade, Patricia was forced out of her luxury apartment on the Upper East Side. She ended up staying in a tiny, dilapidated motel in Queens, surviving on cash borrowed from distant acquaintances who quickly stopped answering her calls.
Three weeks after the arrests, I stepped out of the headquarters of Blackstone Crest Holdings in midtown Manhattan.
The autumn rain was pouring down, slicking the avenues in black reflection. My driver opened the rear door of my armored Maybach, holding a black umbrella over my head.
Suddenly, a figure drenched in rain darted out from behind a concrete pillar, throwing herself onto the wet pavement in front of my shoes.
It was Patricia.
Her pristine blonde hair was matted and grey at the roots. Her expensive clothes were stained and wrinkled, and her face was gaunt, aged ten years in a matter of weeks.
“Evelyn! Please!” Patricia sobbed, reaching out her hands to grab the hem of my trousers, though my guards instantly pulled her back. “Evelyn, look at me! I’m begging you on my knees!”
I looked down at the woman who had spent ten years calling me a "worthless leech" and a "gold-digger."
“Get up, Patricia,” I said flatly. “You’re making a scene.”
“I don't care about a scene!” she wept, her voice hoarse and cracking against the noise of the city traffic. “Everett is sick in prison! He can’t survive in there, Evelyn! The other inmates... they’re terrifying! He’s having panic attacks every day!”
“He should have thought about that before he committed federal financial crimes,” I replied.
“It was my fault!” Patricia cried out, pounding her fists against the wet sidewalk. “I pushed him! I told him he needed to show society he was a powerful man! I encouraged him to see Madison because I wanted a younger, wealthier daughter-in-law! Blame me, Evelyn! Punish me! Just drop the civil suits and help hire a good lawyer for my boy!”
I leaned down slightly, looking into the bloodshot, desperate eyes of my former mother-in-law.
“Do you remember what you said to me at the gala, Patricia?” I asked softly. “When wine was dripping down my face, and your son threw his wedding ring at my feet?”
Patricia trembled, unable to answer.
“You told me to drop to my knees and beg for forgiveness,” I reminded her, my voice as cold as the autumn rain falling around us. “You told me I was an absolute nobody without your son.”
“I was wrong!” she screamed through her tears. “I was blind! You are the power! You were always the power!”
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“I know,” I said, standing up to my full height. “Which is why I have no reason to show mercy to people who tried to destroy me.”
I stepped into the back seat of the Maybach. The heavy door closed with a solid, airtight thud, cutting off her wails entirely. My driver pulled out into the Manhattan traffic, leaving Patricia weeping on the wet pavement in the dark.
