The wine flew across the table and soaked my mother before anyone around us even had time to understand what was happening

Two weeks after the arraignment, the pressure on the Vance family had reached a boiling point.

Vance Capital had lost three major pension fund accounts, totaling over two hundred million dollars in managed assets. The public backlash had been so severe that Richard Vance was forced to take an involuntary leave of absence as Managing Partner. Meanwhile, Wendy had become a social pariah; her country club membership was quietly suspended, and her long-time socialite friends suddenly found themselves "too busy" to take her phone calls.

I was sitting in the office at Sterling’s, going over the fall menu launch with Executive Chef Marcus, when my phone rang.

It was a call from an unknown landline number.

"Clara Sterling," I answered.

"Clara... please don't hang up," a voice whimpered on the other end.

It was Wendy.

Her voice was unrecognizable. It was raspy, shaking, stripped of all the polished, superior venom she had wielded for years. She sounded like a broken woman standing at the edge of a cliff.

"How did you get this number, Wendy?" I asked coldly, keeping my composure. "You're violating the court's protective order by calling me."

"I know, I know! Please, I'm using a payphone outside the market," Wendy sobbed, sounding terrified. "I don't care about the order! Clara, you have to talk to Luca! He won't answer my calls, he won't look at my letters, he completely blocked my number! He’s my only son, Clara!"

I leaned back in my leather chair, listening to her breathe heavily through the receiver.

"You should have thought about that before you treated his fiancé and her mother like dirt, Wendy," I said flatly.

"I was wrong!" Wendy cried out, her pride completely obliterated. "I was foolish and arrogant and wrong! I thought... I thought I was protecting him! I thought you were after his money! I didn't know who your father was! If I had known—"

"Stop right there," I interrupted, my voice dropping into a razor-sharp register. "Read what you just said out loud, Wendy."

There was a silence on the line.

"You just admitted that you only care because my father owns the building," I continued, anger flaring deep in my chest. "If I really had been a poor waitress struggling to make rent, if my mother really had been a working-class woman with no connections, you would still be sitting in your Gold Coast mansion laughing about pouring wine on her. You aren't sorry for what you did. You're sorry that I had the power to hit you back."

"Clara, please..." she begged, her voice trailing off into pathetically shallow gasps. "Richard is divorcing me. Do you hear me? He served me with divorce papers yesterday! He blames me for losing the firm! My whole life is ruined!"

"You ruined your own life, Wendy," I said calmly. "You chose cruelty over kindness. You chose classism over respect. And now you're paying the price for it."

"What do you want from me?" she wailed. "What do I have to do to get my son back?!"

"You can start by taking accountability in court next week," I told her. "No fake excuses. No legal tricks. Stand in front of the judge, plead guilty, and accept your sentence. And after that... leave Luca alone until he decides if he ever wants to see your face again."

"Clara—"

I hung up the phone and immediately called Victoria Sterling.

"Victoria," I said when my aunt answered. "Wendy Vance just called my personal phone from a payphone, begging for mercy. She broke the protective order."

"Did you record it?" Victoria asked instantly.