Chapter 5 - The Execution of the DebtThe silence inside the executive office was suffocating.
Diane turned her head sharply, staring at her son with a look of sudden, catastrophic horror. "Brendan...? You... you stole money from the corporate fund?! Is that why the auditors were at the house last week?!"
Brendan didn't answer his mother. He sat on the floor, his mind completely shattered, his mouth open, watching two NYPD detectives step out from the side conference room holding an arrest warrant.
"Brendan Morrison?" the lead detective announced calmly. "You are under arrest for grand larceny, corporate fraud, and embezzlement."
"No! No! Cassidy! Help me!" Brendan shrieked as the detectives pulled his arms behind his back, clicking heavy steel handcuffs around his wrists. "Cassidy! Tell them it was a corporate loan! Tell them you authorized it! I'm the father of your child!"
I stood up slowly from my leather chair, adjusting my ivory maternity jacket, looking down into his terrified, weeping face.
"You were never fit to be a husband, Brendan," I said, my baritone smooth, quiet, and holding zero lingering hatred. "And you will certainly never be fit to be a father."
"Cassidy! Please!" Brendan screamed as the detectives dragged his kicking, pleading body out through the double mahogany doors into the private elevator.
Jessica backed away into the corridor, weeping hysterically, running toward the public stairs to escape the corporate security guards who were waiting to serve her with a civil asset forfeiture summons.
Only Diane remained standing in my office.
The arrogant matriarch who had ruled Long Island society for twenty years stood alone on my rug, stripped of her home, her money, her social status, and her son.
She looked at me—at the quiet, pregnant woman she had dismissed as a 'poor burden'—and let out a broken, pathetic sob.
"What... what am I supposed to do now, Cassidy?" Diane whimpered, her hands trembling at her sides.
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I picked up a crisp twenty-dollar bill from my desk drawer, walked over to her, and pressed it gently into her trembling palm.
"Take a cab, Diane," I whispered softly near her ear. "And make sure you don't get that smell on the seats."
