Chapter 10 - The Chains of Ruin
Special Agent Davis of the FBI stepped forward, unholstering heavy steel tactical handcuffs with a sharp, mechanical click.
Two agents wrenched Jaxson up from the floor by his tuxedo collar, twisting his arms behind his back with ruthless, unyielding force.
Jaxson thrashed frantically, his expensive shirt ripping down the chest, his polished shoes scraping uselessly across the stage.
“Get off me! Do you know who I am?!” Jaxson shrieked, tears and snot smearing across his pale cheeks.
“I am a Vance! My grandfather built the railways! My family owns this state!”
“Your family owns an eight-by-ten cell in the federal penitentiary in Otisville, Mr. Vance,” Agent Davis replied coldly, ratcheting the steel cuffs so tightly around Jaxson’s wrists that his fingers turned white.
Beside him, two female federal marshals grabbed Bianca Caldwell, locking her hands in iron restraints as she kicked and screamed obscenities.
“I didn't kill anyone!” Bianca wailed, her voice echoing shrilly down the vaulted corridor.
“I just wanted to be rich! Jaxson made me do it!”
“You are charged with twenty-four counts of money laundering, corporate fraud complicity, and perjury, Miss Caldwell,” the marshal stated, dragging her down the stage stairs.
The media cameras exploded in blinding waves of flashes, capturing every second of the disgraced golden couple’s total humiliation.
Jaxson was dragged past the front row of the ballroom, his eyes searching frantically for a single friend, partner, or ally among the elite crowd.
Every single billionaire, senator, and socialite who had cheered his name twenty minutes ago stepped backward with visible disgust, turning their faces away from his gaze.
He was no longer a rising titan of American industry.
He was a fratricidal murderer and an exposed thief, dragged like a dog through the broken glass of his own coronation.
As the federal marshals pulled him through the grand double doors of the Pierre, Jaxson locked eyes with me one final time.
I stood at the center of the illuminated stage, draped in black diamonds, the Eye of Babylon shining at my throat like an eternal star.
I did not sneer.
May you like
I did not mock him.
I simply raised my champagne glass, took a slow, elegant sip, and watched the doors slam shut behind his screams forever.
