The justice system is notoriously sluggish, but when it finally accelerates, it flattens everything in its path.
Fallon’s criminal trial was a media circus. Stripped of her mother’s blood money, she was represented by an exhausted public defender. When the jury viewed the horrific skeletal radiographs of Veda’s ribs, the verdict took less than two hours. Fallon shrieked for her mommy as the judge sentenced her to fifteen years in a state penitentiary. There are no Prada sunglasses in cell block D. She has a decade and a half to sit on a steel toilet and meditate on what she did to my child.
The termination of the software license was a fatal, decapitating strike. Caldwell Logistics defaulted on their contracts within forty-eight hours. Creditors swarmed like locusts. Sullivan was forced to file for Chapter 7 corporate liquidation within a fortnight.
To avoid serving hard time in a federal facility for perjury, Merit accepted a humiliating plea agreement. She received five years of heavily monitored probation and a crippling financial fine. The bank foreclosed on the sprawling estate. The country club publicly revoked their memberships. Merit now resides in a cramped, two-bedroom rental in the industrial district, too mortified to show her face at the local grocer.
Lawson was permanently stripped of all custody and visitation rights. Destitute and legally radioactive, the former Vice President of Sales was forced into the real workforce. He currently works the graveyard shift at a big-box hardware retailer, fracturing his spine hauling bags of concrete for minimum wage.
As for Veda and me, we stepped out of the shadows. I resigned from the rail yard. Backed by the massive revenue of my software firm, I purchased a sprawling, single-story ranch house surrounded by endless green lawns. There are no steep driveways. There are no stairs. Only flat, warm safety.
Veda healed flawlessly. Just yesterday, she took her first independent, wobbly steps in our backyard, falling into my arms with a loud, joyful giggle that mended the deepest cracks in my soul. Aunt Greer comes over for Sunday dinners, holding Veda in her lap, and we simply enjoy the quiet peace.
Some critics argue I went too far—that bankrupting the grandparents was a step beyond justice into cruelty. But I remember the cold, reptilian gaze Merit gave me when she tried to lock me in a cage. I remember that a family operating like a cartel will never stop hunting you unless you burn their infrastructure to the absolute bedrock.
I merely audited the system. And the system failed.
