Chapter 13: The Trial
The trial of Arthur Ashford lasted eleven weeks.
Former executives testified.
Inspectors confessed.
Families of dead sailors filled the courtroom.
Julian accepted a plea agreement and admitted his role in sabotaging the Red Meridian.
He tried to claim Arthur had forced him.
Celeste testified for nearly six hours.
Arthur’s attorney displayed photographs of her military injuries and suggested trauma had made her unstable.
Celeste did not react.
Then the attorney asked why her own family had rejected her if she was so honorable.
Before Celeste could answer, Victoria stood from the gallery.
“Because we were cruel.”
The judge ordered her to sit.
Victoria refused.
She later took the witness stand and confessed to framing Celeste for theft years earlier.
Arthur had ordered it after Celeste discovered suspicious company accounts.
Victoria had planted financial records in Celeste’s room.
Julian had testified against her.
Margaret had remained silent.
The family had not erased Celeste because she was a failure.
They had erased her because she had come too close to the truth.
Eleanor provided the final evidence.
As a child, she had hidden a small voice recorder inside a music box.
The recording captured Arthur discussing the designer’s murder.
Arthur’s face collapsed as his own voice filled the courtroom.
The jury found him guilty on every major charge.
He received multiple life sentences.
Julian received twenty-two years.
Hale received thirty.
Margaret avoided prison after cooperating, but she lost all claim to the family trust.
Outside the courthouse, reporters surrounded Celeste.
One shouted, “Did you destroy your father’s empire?”
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Celeste looked toward the families of the dead sailors.
“No,” she said. “He destroyed it himself.”
