BENEATH THE MARBLE FLOORS

I wore an elegant, tailored charcoal suit, my hair styled impeccably, my posture straight and dignified. Beside me walked Elena, Victoria Sterling, and my private legal detail. I looked completely different from the hollow, bruised woman who had been cut out of an iron cage.

I was whole, strong, and entirely unshakeable.

The heavy oak doors of the grand deposition room opened, and federal marshals escorted Marcus and Eleanor inside.

Both were dressed in orange federal prison jumpsuits, their wrists and ankles bound in heavy steel chains.

Marcus looked broken. The polished, arrogant billionaire had vanished—his dark hair was unkempt, his face gaunt, his posture slumped under the weight of his iron restraints. Eleanor looked aged by twenty years, her sharp, cold demeanor crushed by three months in a federal holding cell.

When Marcus lifted his head and saw me—sitting radiant, healthy, and holding an official legal binder—his jaw dropped, a gasp escaping his lips.

“Clara...” Marcus stammered, taking a step toward me before a marshal yanked his chain back. “Clara... please... you have to listen to me! My mother forced me into this! She controlled the offshore accounts!”

“Shut your mouth, Marcus!” Eleanor shrieked, turning on her son with venomous rage. “You cowardly fool! You were the one who wanted her dead!”

“Silence in the deposition chamber!” the federal magistrate commanded, slamming his gavel down.

I sat quietly at the head of the mahogany conference table, watching the two parasites turn on each other like cornered animals.

Marcus’s lead defense attorney, Arthur Pendelton, cleared his throat nervously, pulling out a proposal file.

“Mrs. Blackwood,” Pendelton began, his voice lacking all confidence. “My client is prepared to sign over full, unencumbered ownership of Blackwood Manor, forfeit all joint corporate shares, and agree to a total surrender of parental rights if the government agrees to drop the human trafficking charges.”

I leaned forward across the table, looking directly into Marcus’s terrified, hollow eyes.

“I don't need you to sign over Blackwood Manor, Marcus,” I said, my voice smooth, clear, and cutting through the room like ice. “The federal government seized the manor under asset forfeiture two weeks ago. And as for your parental rights—no court on earth would ever allow a monster like you within a thousand miles of my daughter.”

I pulled a crisp legal document from my folder and slid it across the table toward his attorney.

“That is an official petition for absolute divorce, complete name change, and total financial liquidation,” I declared. “Signed by the federal bankruptcy court.”

Marcus stared at the paper, his hands trembling violently against his steel cuffs.