Chapter 14 - The Price of Arrogance
The emergency legal hearing took place seventy-two hours later inside the Pitkin County Courthouse.
Because Leo was still recovering from severe lung congestion and minor frostbite at the hospital, Clara appeared via live video feed from Leo's private room, seated right beside his bed.
In the courtroom, Evelyn sat at the defense table dressed in orange county jail scrubs, her hair unwashed, her face pale and sunken without makeup. Richard sat three chairs down from her, wearing a cheap suit his assistant had bought off the rack, his face bruised from the bridge crash. They refused to look at each other.
Richard’s lead attorney, a slick Manhattan litigator named Sterling, stood before Judge Morrison.
"Your Honor, regardless of the tragic domestic disputes that occurred within the home, Clara Miller is an unfit guardian who willfully drove a minor child onto an icy highway during a blizzard, directly causing a catastrophic multi-vehicle collision on the Bear Creek Bridge," Sterling argued smoothly. "She endangered the boy just as severely as any alleged hypothermia exposure. We demand custody be remanded to a neutral third-party trust."
Judge Morrison, a formidable woman in her late sixties who had seen every trick wealthy men could buy, looked over her reading glasses at Sterling.
"Are you finished, Mr. Sterling?" the judge asked dryly.
"I am, Your Honor."
"Good. Because the court has just received the state highway patrol’s accident reconstruction report," Judge Morrison said, tapping a thick file on her bench. "The black-box data from Richard Vance’s Cadillac Escalade reveals that he was traveling at eighty-two miles an hour in a thirty-five-mile-an-hour snow zone. He struck Ms. Miller's vehicle from behind three separate times before the bridge."
Sterling’s mouth opened, but no words came out. He glanced back at Richard, who buried his face in his hands.
"Furthermore," Judge Morrison continued, her voice ringing like a funeral bell throughout the courtroom, "the court has reviewed the audio transcripts from the Vance residence's nursery monitoring system, retrieved by state investigators yesterday morning. Mrs. Vance can be heard boasting on the phone to an acquaintance that she was going to 'weed the boy out of the family trust' so her future biological children would inherit the Vance real estate portfolio."
Evelyn let out a choked sob and slumped forward onto the mahogany table.
"Evelyn Vance," Judge Morrison announced, her gavel held high, "you are remanded to the state correctional facility without bail pending your criminal trial for attempted murder. Richard Vance, you are hereby stripped of all custodial rights, and your assets are frozen pending civil restitution proceedings."
May you like
The heavy wooden gavel slammed down with a resounding, definitive CRACK.
Cliffhanger: On the video monitor, Clara exhaled a breath she felt like she had been holding for half a decade—until a tiny, warm hand reached up from the hospital sheets and tugged her sleeve.
