CHAPTER 6
By eight o'clock the following morning, the news of the Hawthorne family arrests exploded across every major news network in North America.
Helicopters hovered over the massive Hawthorne estate in Connecticut, broadcasting live footage of federal agents seizing fleet luxury cars, fine art, and encrypted server racks.
Outside the federal courthouse in lower Manhattan, hundreds of reporters and camera crews swarmed the granite steps as the family was brought in for arraignment.
Adrian, Charles, and Margaret were led out of transport vans wearing bright orange jumpsuits, their wrists and ankles bound in heavy, clanking steel chains.
Margaret tried to hide her face from the flashing cameras, her pristine socialite image utterly ruined as reporters shouted questions about the secret subterranean bunker.
Adrian looked completely hollowed out, his posture slouched and his face pale as he caught sight of me standing at the top of the courthouse steps alongside Detective Vance.
I wore a sharp, custom-tailored black suit, standing tall and unwavering alongside Lydia, who sat proudly in a wheelchair supported by federal medical staff.
The crowd gasped as the media recognized Lydia Hawthorne—the woman the world believed had abandoned her family six years ago—standing alive beside the second wife.
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"Look at them, Adrian!" a reporter screamed from behind the barricades. "Is it true you kept your first wife in a bunker while marrying another woman?!"
Adrian flinched, turning his head away in deep shame as federal marshals roughly escorted him through the heavy bronze doors of the federal building.
