“Mrs. Hayes,” Marcus said again, softer this time. “Let’s get you home.”
Home.
The Malibu estate where Richard and I had lived.
Where he’d planned my murder.
“I don’t have a home,” I whispered.
“Then we’ll find you one.”
I let Marcus guide me out of the house, into the bright Arizona morning.
The FBI agents were loading Richard into one car, my mother into another.
Richard was crying.
My mother’s face was blank.
Neither of them looked at me.
And as we drove away, back toward Los Angeles, back toward whatever came next, I realized something.
I’d been so focused on staying ahead of Richard, on preparing for the worst, that I’d never stopped to grieve the life I’d lost.
The marriage that had been a lie.
The family I’d never had.
The mother who’d sold me for money.
Now, driving through the desert, the sun rising over the red rocks, I finally let myself feel it.
The betrayal.
The loss.
The loneliness.
I pressed my hand to my stomach.
“It’s just us now,” I whispered to my daughter. “But I promise—I promise—I will never let anyone hurt you the way they hurt me.”
The baby shifted inside me.
A flutter.
A reminder that even in the middle of devastation, life kept going.
And so would I.
The weeks that followed were a blur of legal proceedings, depositions, and damage control.
Richard’s embezzlement had been extensive. He’d moved nearly three hundred million dollars out of my company’s accounts, funneling it through shell corporations and offshore accounts. My legal team worked around the clock to trace and recover the funds.
David Morrison, my former head of security, was arrested trying to board a flight to the Cayman Islands. He confessed to everything in exchange for a reduced sentence.
Richard and my mother were both denied bail.
