Chapter 11 - The Matriarch's Begging
After the federal agents cleared the stage, the ballroom remained in a state of suspended, breathless awe.
Eleanor Vance, having regained consciousness with the aid of smelling salts, crawled across the Persian carpet toward the dais.
Her thousand-dollar hairstyle was completely disheveled, her emerald necklace dangling sideways, her face stained with black mascara and tears of ruined pride.
She reached the bottom of the stage stairs, throwing her trembling hands onto the velvet carpeting before my heels.
“Maya… please! My darling girl!” Eleanor wept hysterically, clawing at the hem of my midnight-black gown.
“We were friends! Your mother and I served on the Philharmonic board together for twenty years!”
“Jaxson was young! He was foolish! He was misled by bad advisors!”
“Do not destroy our entire family lineage over a youthful mistake!”
“I will give you everything! I will sign over all the family real estate in Manhattan, the estates in Newport, the private islands!”
“Just call your lawyers and withdraw the federal murder testimony!”
I looked down at the woman who had watched me scrub floors for five years while boasting in society magazines that her son had conquered the aerospace industry.
I remembered the cold winter nights in Millbrook, heating canned soup over a rusted hotplate while Eleanor Vance hosted forty-thousand-dollar charity dinners in the Hamptons.
I gently lifted the hem of my dress out of her clutching fingers, taking a step backward with regal precision.
“When your son struck me in that diner today, Eleanor, he called me a clumsy peasant who lived on tips and humiliation,” I said, my voice echoing with an ice-cold finality that froze the room.
“When he murdered my father in that plane crash, you cashed a four-hundred-million-dollar life insurance policy and bought a villa in Cap d'Antibes.”
“You knew about the thermite charge on that plane.”
“You signed the corporate resolution authorizing the transfer of my father’s patents two days after his memorial service.”
Eleanor’s eyes widened in sheer, paralyzed horror as two United States Marshals stepped up behind her.
“You are not a grieving mother, Eleanor,” I whispered.
“You are an accessory to premeditated homicide.”
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“And your cell is already waiting beside your son’s.”
The marshals hauled Eleanor to her feet, wrenching her arms behind her back as she shrieked and sobbed, her expensive designer gown dragging through the puddle of spilled champagne as she was escorted out into the flashing lights of the waiting police convoy.
