Chapter 10 - Justice Unvarnished
The criminal trial of Eleanor Sterling and Marcus Vance concluded three months later. Deprived of her influence and abandoned by the political figures she had funded for decades, Eleanor sat in the defendant's dock as the jury foreperson read the verdicts: guilty of conspiracy to commit aggravated battery, guilty of extortion, and guilty of witness tampering.
Because of Eleanor’s age and lack of prior felony convictions, the judge sentenced her to seven years at a federal correctional institution, alongside an unprecedented civil penalty that stripped the Sterling family trust of its controlling interest in several local utilities, redirecting funds into countywide victim compensation reserves.
Julian escaped prison time by entering an open guilty plea to misprision of a felony and obstruction of justice. He was sentenced to three years of intensive community service and five years of strict probation. More significantly, the probate court permanently severed all of his parental claims to Hannah, citing gross endangerment and voluntary complicity in violent coercion.
On the day Eleanor was remanded into custody, Claire stood outside the courthouse steps holding one-year-old Hannah on her hip.
Eleanor, handcuffed and wearing a drab gray transport coat over her clothes, was escorted down the steps by federal marshals. As she passed Claire, the older woman paused for a fraction of a second. Her silver hair was unkempt, the pearl earrings long gone, her eyes hollowed by defeat.
She looked at Hannah—the child she had tried to claim as an aristocratic trophy—and saw her own hazel eyes staring back at her, but completely devoid of cruelty, filled instead with the pure, bright innocence of a child raised in love.
"You took everything," Eleanor croaked, her voice trembling with ruined venom.
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"No, Eleanor," Claire replied with calm grace, adjusting the warm woolen blanket around Hannah’s shoulders. "You threw everything away. I only kept what was mine."
The marshals nudged Eleanor forward into the waiting van, the heavy steel doors slamming shut with a finality that echoed down the stone plaza.
