Chapter 12
The criminal cases took longer.
Ulric’s conduct divided naturally into separate categories.
The child-abuse case:
Threatening a five-year-old with a baseball bat.
Smashing the glass table beside him.
Mocking his dead father.
Swinging the bat at Rhydian when confronted.
The business case:
False certification concerning third-party proposals.
Use of Calder’s genuine signature page to support a different valuation document.
Concealment of Blackridge negotiations.
Related financial representations tied to exercising the death option.
Prosecutors did not charge him with “stealing a company.”
Northwell had not been sold to him.
The estate had stopped the closing.
They focused on completed conduct they could prove.
Ulric’s lawyers contested intent around the signature page.
They argued an assistant assembled the certificate incorrectly.
That defense weakened after investigators recovered an email from Ulric:
Use Calder signed page from insurance packet. Same valuation number. Need this finished before estate lawyers overcomplicate it.
No poetic confession.
Just a practical instruction.
Then another:
Do not send draft to Rhydian.
The financial case became substantially stronger.
Ulric eventually entered negotiated pleas covering document fraud, attempted financial fraud, false certification, child endangerment, and assaultive conduct.
The sentence reflected:
No prior felony record.
The fact that Esmond was not physically struck.
The serious risk created by shattered glass and a raised bat.
Planning in the financial conduct.
Attempted loss measured in millions.
And restitution obligations from the civil settlement.
He received a custodial sentence followed by supervised release.
Financial penalties.
Restitution.
A long-term protective order barring contact with Esmond.
And restrictions preventing him from serving as fiduciary or controlling financial agent for a minor.
His share of Northwell had already been sold through the independent process.
He remained financially secure after taxes, legal costs, settlements, and penalties.
No fantasy poverty.
He simply did not get the fortune he tried to manufacture from Calder’s death.
Rhydian’s conduct in the living room produced no criminal charge.
Video showed Ulric swinging the bat first.
Rhydian used force to disarm and restrain him.
Stopped when the threat ended.
That distinction mattered.
Esmond asked once:
“Are you in trouble too?”
“No.”
“Because you won?”
Rhydian shook his head.
“Because Uncle Ulric swung the bat at me, and I stopped him.”
Esmond thought.
“What if you hit him after?”
“Then we’d be talking about something different.”
May you like
The boy nodded.
Rules became safer when adults did not rewrite them based on who they liked.
