Police cruisers and financial investigators flooded the estate in a wash of red and blue light. Federal agents moved in with warrants. Harrison was arrested on charges tied to wire fraud, tax evasion, and operating a Ponzi scheme. Naomi, sensing the ship was sinking, turned on him instantly, offering cooperation, demanding divorce, and publicly abandoning him the second survival required it.
Her reward never came.
Her father, a powerful politician, disowned her after the fake pregnancy scandal detonated across the media. In one phone call, Naomi lost her name, her protection, and her access to the world she thought would always catch her.
Inside the mansion, the destruction became more intimate.
Auditors swept through the property tagging furniture, jewelry, art, cigars, chandeliers, and even the champagne display as seized assets. Richard raged until he understood no one was listening anymore. Patricia collapsed at Olivia’s feet, begging for mercy, weeping over the house, the jewelry, the status, the life she was about to lose. She pleaded as a mother. She pleaded as blood. She pleaded as if none of the cruelty before this had happened.
Olivia remembered the blizzard.