Chapter 11 - The Subpoena and the Panic
The reality of legal accountability hit Victoria like a freight train two weeks later. Two uniformed county deputies marched up the marble steps of the Caldwell estate and handed her a formal court subpoena alongside an emergency restraining order barring her from coming within five hundred yards of either Ethan or me.
For the first time in her life, Victoria panicked. She called every high-priced corporate defense attorney in Connecticut, only to discover that Ethan had already retained the top ten law firms in the state on retainer, completely locking her out of legal representation.
May you like
Her social standing began to unravel overnight. Word of the doorbell security footage leaked to local society columns, turning her into a pariah among her country club peers. The very women she had lorded over for decades suddenly found urgent reasons to cancel lunch dates and ignore her phone calls.
Victoria realized too late that her cruelty had not erased me—it had only exposed her own pathetic vulnerability.
