Chapter 10 - THE GAVEL FALLS
Outside the courthouse steps, a dozen cameras flashed as reporters shouted questions into the frosty Chicago morning air. Darcy stood beside me, fielding the legal inquiries with her characteristic surgical precision, explaining the landmark financial abuse precedents established by our victory.
When the reporters finally dispersed, Darcy turned to me, wrapping her arm around my shoulders. “It’s over, Sloan. The federal prosecutors are offering him a plea deal of eight to ten years. He’s taking it. He won’t even go to trial.”
“And Fiona?” I asked quietly.
“Fiona surrendered her passport,” Darcy said. “Her Cayman accounts were seized to pay back the legal fees and back taxes Julian owed on his shell companies. She moved into a small one-bedroom apartment in Schaumburg. Her days of bossing around society are finished.”
I let out a long, slow breath, watching my breath plume white in the cold air. For five years, my chest had felt like a locked box, constricted by the constant anxiety of pleasing two people who saw me only as a resource to exploit. Now, for the first time in half a decade, I could breathe all the way down into my lungs.
“What are you going to do with the penthouse?” Darcy asked as we walked down the granite steps toward our car.
“Sell it,” I said without a second’s hesitation. “Every square foot of it smells like Julian’s cologne and Fiona’s gardenia perfume. I don’t want to spend another night in a place where I was locked in a kitchen.”
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“Then where are you going?”
I looked past the gray skyscrapers toward the open horizon over Lake Michigan. “Somewhere warm. Somewhere with a big kitchen where the doors never have locks.”
