Chapter 5: The Mother’s Counter-Attack
Chapter 5: The Mother’s Counter-Attack
Clara looked at the divorce papers on the table, then at Victoria’s smug, flawless face. For months, Clara had felt small, inadequate, and terrified of the Vance family’s shadow. But looking at the paper that demanded she surrender her daughter, something inside her finally snapped.
She picked up the thick packet of papers, walked to the door, and threw them out into the muddy walkway of the motel.
"Get out," Clara said, her voice dropping to an icy, absolute tone that mirrored Julian’s from the night before.
"You're making a mistake, Clara," Victoria hissed, her mask of civility slipping. "You will starve in this gutter."
"I survived working three jobs to pay for my college before I met Julian, Victoria. I know how to fight," Clara said. "Eleanor thinks wealth makes her a god. But she’s just an old, lonely woman who has to buy affection. Tell her she can keep her money. She will never touch my daughter."
When Julian returned to the room hours later, exhausted and rejected by five different law firms, Clara didn't tell him about Victoria's visit. Instead, she showed him a small, battered laptop.
"Julian, do you remember my older brother, Leo?" Clara asked.
Julian blinked. "The one who went off the grid in Seattle?"
"He didn't go off the grid. He’s a cyber-security specialist for the federal government," Clara said, a sharp glint in her eyes. "Eleanor thinks she controls the narrative because she owns the local media. But she forgot one thing. The Vance mansion has a fully automated, cloud-based smart security system. And I still have the master developer login saved on my old phone from when the technicians set it up."
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Julian’s eyes widened. "The nursery camera... the whole incident was recorded on the private cloud server."
"Exactly," Clara smiled. "Eleanor thought she wiped the local hard drives when she kicked us out. But she doesn't know about the off-site encryption backup."
