Chapter 7 - THE PORTRAIT REVEALED"Turn that off!" Richard shrieked, lunging forward off the stage like a cornered animal, his face draining of all color. "It’s a fake! Deepfake technology! They’re trying to frame me!"
"Is it a fake, Richard?" a calm, deep voice asked from behind the federal agents.
A tall man stepped out from the shadow of the estate’s portico. He wore a heavy trench coat, his dark hair touched with silver at the temples, and his eyes—a sharp, electric blue—stared straight through Richard’s soul.
The entire crowd gasped, several older society women pressing their hands to their mouths in sheer, unadulterated horror.
It was David Vance.
Richard staggered backward, his knees buckling beneath him as if he had been struck by lightning. He stared at the man he had left for dead in a locked, subterranean maintenance vault beneath the old boathouse six years ago—a vault where loyal union workers had secretly kept him alive in the dark until Eleanor Vance’s private investigators finally located the architectural blueprints last night.
"Hello, Richard," David said, his voice cold, steady, and filled with a lifetime of vengeance. "You did a terrible job painting over my portrait. The brushstrokes were entirely too amateur."
Before Richard could turn to run, the two federal agents were on him. Heavy steel handcuffs clicked sharply around his wrists, pinning his arms behind his back as he thrashed and cursed in a frenzy of absolute defeat.
District Attorney Thomas Sterling tried to slip quietly toward the exit gate, but a state trooper stepped into his path, blocking his escape with a stern, unyielding expression.
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"Thomas Sterling, you’re under arrest for conspiracy to obstruct justice and accessory to homicide," the trooper announced, reading him his rights as the flashbulbs of a dozen suddenly materialized press cameras began to pop like lightning storms.
Across the lawn, Sophie watched as Richard was shoved into the back of a black and white cruiser. She felt a warm, heavy hand rest gently on her shoulder. She looked up, and for the first time in six years, she saw her real father smiling down at her, not through layers of dried oil paint, but in the warm, living light of day.
