Chapter 6 - The Fall of the Empire
With Jackson locked away without bail, the domino effect collapsed the entire Moretti family structure within four weeks.
Without access to my money or the fraudulent lines of credit Jackson had set up in my name, his father’s auto-dealership network went into immediate involuntary bankruptcy. Federal auditors seized the showrooms, the inventory, and the corporate records, uncovering a decade of tax evasion and money laundering.
Genesis, who had spent twenty years living as a high-society matriarch, was forced to move into a small, one-bedroom rental apartment on the outskirts of the city—a place with three steep flights of concrete stairs and no elevator.
One rainy Tuesday afternoon, I walked through the newly cleared construction site of the St. Paul Downtown Convention Center—the very project Jackson had tried to steal from me.
Wearing a white hard hat and a high-visibility trench coat, I stood alongside my senior engineering team, reviewing the blueprint master plans.
"Ms. Cross," my lead site director said, pointing toward the eastern perimeter gate. "There's a woman outside the fence demanding to see you. Security is about to call the police."
I looked toward the gate. Standing in the pouring rain, holding a broken umbrella, was Genesis.
She was unrecognizable. Her mink coats were gone, replaced by a wet, stained raincoat. Her expensive styled hair was flat and gray, her face lined with exhaustion and defeat.
"Let her through," I told the guard.
Genesis shuffled across the muddy construction site, her cheap shoes soaking through. She stopped ten feet from me, trembling in the cold wind.
"Evelyn..." she whispered, her voice cracked and weak, completely stripped of its former poisonous arrogance. "Please..."
"You shouldn't be here, Genesis," I said calmly, resting my hands in my coat pockets. "The restraining order covers construction sites owned by my firm."
"I have nowhere else to go," she sobbed, dropping her broken umbrella into the mud. "They took the house. They took the cars. My husband is facing tax fraud charges. Jackson is... Jackson is losing his mind in that prison, Evelyn. He attempted self-harm last night."
I looked at her, feeling a strange, distant sense of pity—not the kind that breeds forgiveness, but the kind you feel for a fallen predator that brought about its own destruction.
"You sat at that dinner table, Genesis," I reminded her softly. "You watched your son throw a heavy plate at my head. You watched my blood run down onto your white linen tablecloth. And do you remember what you did?"
Genesis lowered her head, weeping bitterly.
"You kept carving the roast lamb," I said, my voice cutting through the sound of the rain. "You didn't offer a towel. You didn't tell him to stop. You looked at my blood as if it were just an inconvenient mess on your carpet."
"I was afraid of him!" she lied desperately.
"No, you weren't," I corrected her. "You were hungry for my money. You enabled his cruelty because it paid for your lifestyle. And now, you are paying the bill."
I pulled a card from my pocket and tossed it into the mud at her feet.
May you like
"That is the number for legal aid housing services," I said. "That is the absolute maximum extent of my mercy. If you ever come near me, my home, or my job sites again, I will have you booked for felony stalking."
I turned my back on her and walked toward the rising steel beams of my grandest architectural achievement.
