His secretary, Chloe, was escorted into the room in handcuffs shortly after, having been intercepted at the ground-floor elevator while trying to flee with a flash drive packed with corrupted company data.

“Vivienne, please!” Dominic screamed as the officers dragged him down the center aisle of the ballroom, his custom tuxedo wrinkling under their grip. “I made a mistake!

I love you! Don’t let them do this to me! Think of what this will do to my life!”

I turned my back completely to him, facing the dark, rain-slicked Manhattan skyline through the glass walls. I didn’t say a single word. My silence was the final, definitive answer he would ever receive from me.

Over the next eighteen months, the Sterling family legal team systematically dismantled every asset Dominic and his co-conspirators believed they owned.

Dominic pleaded guilty to avoid a maximum sentence, receiving fourteen years in a federal penitentiary with no possibility of parole. His hidden offshore accounts were seized by court order, his luxury vehicles were liquidated at public auction, and the Vance family mansion was sold to cover corporate restitution and back taxes.