Chapter 18 - The Price of Pride
Julian didn't flinch. He rose slowly to his full height, holding the oilcloth cylinder in his left hand. He stepped smoothly around Nora, placing his broader frame between her and her ex-husband.
"You're pathetic, Gavin," Julian said, his voice cutting through the storm with chilling authority. "You were pathetic when you threw Nora away five years ago because you thought an inheritance meant easy money, and you're pathetic now, doing dirty work for a family that wouldn't let you clean their stables."
"Shut up!" Gavin lunged forward, swinging the tire iron in a wild, clumsy arc.
Julian didn't back away. He ducked under the clumsy swing, stepping inside Gavin's reach with the brutal precision of a man who had trained for years in self-defense. Julian’s right hand caught Gavin’s wrist, twisting it sharply downward until the tire iron clattered onto the wooden floorboards.
Before Gavin could recover his balance, Julian shoved him hard against the heavy timber pillar of the millstone.
Gavin hit the wood with a wet thud, sliding down into the dirt, clutching his twisted wrist and gasping for air.
"You're done, Gavin," Julian said, looking down at him with utter disgust. "Hayes isn't going to pay you. Do you know where Richard Hayes is right now?"
Gavin looked up through his matted hair, terror finally breaking through his rage. "He... he was supposed to meet me at the highway junction at noon."
"Hayes never went to the highway," Nora said, stepping forward, holding up her phone. "The rental car company in Slidell reported that vehicle stolen six hours ago. Hayes took a private charter flight out of Gulfport Airport at ten this morning. He sold you out, Gavin. He used you as a decoy to keep us distracted while he fled the state."
Gavin’s face drained of what little color it had left. "No... no, he gave me his word. He said Arthur Vance had judges in his pocket..."
"Arthur Vance abandoned his own daughter when she was dying," Julian said coldly. "What on earth made you think he would keep a promise to a failed embezzler from Mississippi?"
The sound of approaching sirens rose over the howling wind, cutting through the drumming rain on the roof. Blue and red lights began flashing through the cedar slats of the mill walls.
Nora looked at Gavin. Five years ago, this man had stood in their shared kitchen, packing his designer luggage, smirking as he told her she was a burden, a failure, an anchor dragging down his glorious future. He had looked at her with smug pity, convinced that without him, she would wither into nothing.
Now, he was huddled in the dirt of her grandfather’s mill, broken, friendless, facing years in a federal penitentiary, destroyed entirely by his own insatiable greed.
"I felt sorry for you once, Gavin," Nora said softly, looking down at him without anger, only a profound, liberating pity. "When you left me, I spent months wondering what I had done wrong. But you were right about one thing that night in Biloxi."
Gavin looked up, trembling.
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"Leaving you really was the best decision you ever made," Nora said. "Because it saved me from spending another second in your miserable world."
Two Harrison County sheriff's deputies burst through the door, weapons drawn, shouting commands. Within thirty seconds, Gavin Albright was handcuffed, read his rights, and hauled out into the pouring rain.
