Chapter 10 - The Midnight Grovel at the High-Rise Gates
By 11:30 PM, a freezing rain was falling over the Gold Coast, slicking the asphalt of North State Parkway with a glassy sheet of black ice.
Inside my penthouse, the air was warm, quiet, and peaceful.
A professional cleaning crew, hired by Darcy at 1:00 PM, had spent five hours completely purging the residence of every trace of Julian and Fiona Vance. The sixty silver cloches had been packed into evidence crates and transferred to Darcy’s secure legal vault. The forty-foot dining table had been cleaned, polished, and reset with fresh white lilies. Julian’s remaining suits, golf clubs, and cologne collections had been neatly boxed and moved into an off-site commercial storage unit, where they would sit until the divorce court decided their liquidation value.
I sat on the plush sectional sofa in the living room, wearing a comfortable cashmere sweater and drinking hot tea, while Darcy sat across from me with her laptop, finalizing our motion for immediate default judgment.
Suddenly, my phone buzzed on the coffee table.
It was an alert from the building’s primary security desk. I tapped the screen to connect to the intercom.
“Good evening, Ms. Sterling,” the night concierge, Marcus, spoke through the speaker. “I apologize for disturbing you at this late hour, but Mr. Vance is currently standing outside the exterior pedestrian gate in the rain. He is demanding to be sent up to speak with you. He is refusing to leave the property.”
Darcy immediately lifted her head from her laptop, a cold, predatory smile spreading across her lips. “Tell Marcus to switch the high-resolution lobby security feed to your iPad.”
I tapped the screen, bringing up the live exterior camera stationed above the wrought-iron security gates of 1400 North State Parkway.
Julian was standing in the pouring rain, drenched to the bone. His sweatpants were soaked through, sticking to his shivering legs. His expensive leather sneakers were covered in street grime. He had no umbrella, no coat, and his hair was plastered flat against his forehead.
He was gripping the iron bars of the gate with both hands, shouting incoherently at the security intercom camera.
“Sloan! Sloan, please!” his voice cracked through the external audio feed, trembling with a mixture of hypothermic shivering and sheer, desperate terror. “Please, pick up! Just let me come up for five minutes! I’m begging you!”
I pressed the two-way audio button on the tablet. “Julian. You are currently violating a signed court order of protection. The police station is three blocks away. If you don't step away from that gate in sixty seconds, Lieutenant Miller will have you in a holding cell before midnight.”
Through the camera feed, I watched Julian collapse to his knees right on the wet, freezing pavement. He pressed his forehead against the cold iron bars, tears mingling with the rain streaming down his face.
“Sloan, please don't do this!” he sobbed, his voice stripped of every ounce of the arrogance, cruelty, and superiority he had wielded over me for five years. “Mother collapsed at a budget motel on Clark Street! She’s running a fever! The motel manager kicked us out because our cards declined for a sixty-dollar room! We have nowhere to go! We’re sleeping in a 24-hour laundromat!”
“That sounds like an issue for the social services department, Julian,” I said, my voice completely devoid of emotion.
“I was wrong! I admit it! I was an absolute bastard to you!” Julian cried out, slapping his wet hands against the gate. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry, Sloan! I’ll sign whatever you want! I’ll apologize to you on my knees in front of the entire city! I’ll cut Mother out of our lives completely! Just let me come home! Let me sleep on the kitchen floor! Just don't destroy me like this!”
I looked at the screen.
For five years, I had believed this man held power over my life. I had believed his insults, swallowed his criticisms, and allowed him to convince me that I was lucky to have him.
Seeing him now—a pathetic, broken parasite groveling in the mud, begging to sleep on the very kitchen floor where he had locked me twenty-four hours ago—I felt no joy. I felt no rage.
I only felt a profound, liberating sense of closure.
“Julian,” I said quietly through the speaker.
He looked up into the camera, his eyes wide with desperate, false hope. “Yes, Sloan? Yes, baby?”
“Do you remember what you told me last night when you locked the deadbolt?” I asked.
Julian swallowed hard, his lips trembling.
“You told me that if I failed to serve your mother sixty dishes, I should pack my bags and get the hell out of your house,” I reminded him. “Well, Julian… I served the sixty dishes. The feast was delivered. And now, you’re the one standing outside in the cold.”
“Sloan! No! Sloan, please—”
I turned to Darcy. “Call Lieutenant Miller.”
Darcy tapped her phone. “Already done. Patrol unit is turning onto State Parkway right now.”
On the camera feed, two blue-and-red flashing lights illuminated the rain-slicked street behind Julian. A marked Chicago Police SUV pulled up to the curb. Two officers stepped out into the rain with their handcuffs drawn.
“Julian Vance! Step away from the gate and put your hands behind your back!”
Julian scrambled backward on the pavement, trying to explain, trying to point at the building, but the officers grabbed his arms, forced him against the hood of the patrol car, and clicked the steel handcuffs around his wrists with two loud, echoing snaps.
They shoved him into the back of the squad car and drove away into the night, the sirens fading into the distance.
I closed the iPad screen, set it down on the table, and took a slow, deep breath of the warm, fresh air in my home.
“Darcy,” I said, leaning back into the sofa.
May you like
“Yes, Sloan?”
“Tomorrow morning… let’s take everything else.”
