Chapter 11 - THE FINAL FITTING
He’s coming for you.
I stared at the text message, the diamonds of the Bluebird necklace heavy in my hands.
James was out on bail. With his offshore accounts frozen and his reputation destroyed, he was a desperate man with nothing left to lose.
“Eleanor, lock the front doors,” I said immediately, slipping the necklace into my purse. “Take Charlotte upstairs. Now.”
Eleanor didn’t ask questions. She saw the pure terror in my eyes and immediately grabbed Charlotte’s hand, leading her toward the back stairwell.
“Mom, what’s happening?” Charlotte asked, resisting slightly.
“Just go with Eleanor, sweetie. I’ll be right up.”
I walked out of the private office and stood in the center of the bustling design studio. The young women were still sewing, unaware of the danger.
Suddenly, the heavy wooden front doors of the brownstone shattered inward.
James stood in the doorway.
He looked monstrous. His designer clothes were wrinkled, his face unshaven, his eyes bloodshot and manic. The sophisticated CEO was completely gone.
The young seamstresses screamed, scrambling away from the entrance.
“Did you really think you could hide in New York, Emily?” James bellowed, stepping over the splintered wood. He reached into his coat pocket.
My heart stopped. I expected a gun.
Instead, he pulled out a heavy glass bottle filled with clear liquid. A rag was stuffed into the neck.
A Molotov cocktail.
“If I can’t have the Bennett legacy, nobody can!” he screamed, pulling a lighter from his pocket. “My aunt swore she would burn your mother’s work to the ground, and I’m going to finish the job!”
“James, stop!” I yelled, stepping forward to put myself between him and the studio full of terrified girls. “This isn’t about the company anymore! You’re going to spend the rest of your life in federal prison if you do this!”
“I’m already going to prison!” he laughed, a deranged, hysterical sound. He flicked the lighter. The flame caught the rag.
He raised his arm to throw the firebomb into the center of the fabric-filled room.
But before he could launch it, a figure stepped out from the shadows of the vestibule behind him.
It was Vanessa.
She hadn’t just texted me to warn me. She had followed him from Chicago.
In her hands, she held the heavy brass paperweight from James’s office.
With a scream of pure, maternal rage, Vanessa swung the brass weight and struck James squarely in the back of the head.
James crumpled instantly, dropping the bottle.
The glass shattered on the stone entryway. The flaming rag ignited the spilled gasoline, but it was contained to the non-flammable stone foyer.
Vanessa stomped out the flames with her heavy boots, breathing hard, standing over the unconscious body of the man who had ruined both of our lives.
I ran forward, grabbing a fire extinguisher from the wall, and sprayed the remaining embers until the foyer was filled with white foam.
Through the smoke, Vanessa looked up at me. She dropped the paperweight.
“He tried to take Leo from the hotel room after he made bail,” she said, her voice shaking but resolute. “I hit him, locked Leo in the bathroom, and followed him to the airport. I’m not letting him hurt anyone else.”
Police sirens wailed down the Brooklyn street, summoned by the neighbors who had heard the door smash.
I walked over to Vanessa. The woman who had worn my mother’s dress on a runway just 48 hours ago. The woman who had been my bitterest rival.
I reached out and pulled her into a hug.
May you like
She collapsed against me, sobbing, finally letting go of the twenty years of lies James had fed her.
The police rushed in, dragging James’s unconscious body out of the burning foam and into the back of an ambulance, shackled to a gurney. His reign of terror was permanently, finally over.
