Victor's Sentencing
Chapter 11 - Victor's Sentencing
Victor's trial concluded seven months after the wedding, the combined weight of financial evidence, Gerald Finch's cooperative testimony, and the dramatic, well-witnessed confrontation at the wedding itself leaving little room for the defense strategy his new attorney had attempted to construct.
The jury deliberated for just under two days before returning guilty verdicts on all counts, fraud, elder abuse, and conspiracy to suppress a valid will provision.
Victor's sentencing, held three weeks later, resulted in a term of nine years, along with a full restitution order covering the diverted estate funds and the unauthorized liens against the mansion.
Margaret attended the sentencing with Claire beside her, the two women sitting together in the gallery, a specific, hard-won solidarity visible between them that hadn't existed six months earlier.
"I love my son," Margaret said quietly, as the sentence was read aloud. "I don't think that changes with a verdict, however much it changes everything else."
"You're allowed to love him and still hold him accountable," Claire said. "I think those two things need to exist together, actually, for any of this to actually mean something beyond just punishment."
Gerald Finch's own professional consequences, resolved separately through the state bar's disciplinary process, resulted in the permanent revocation of his license, along with a formal public censure that Teresa described as "exactly the kind of accountability the legal profession needs to take more seriously."
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Audrey, having spent the preceding months quietly processing her father's arrest and trial alongside her own first year of marriage, found herself growing considerably closer to Claire, the two women building a genuine, unexpected family connection.
"I used to think family was just the people you were born into," Audrey told Claire. "I think it's actually the people who show up honestly, even when showing up is hard. You showed up for Grandma on the worst possible night. That's more family than my own father managed to be in forty years."
