Chapter 7 - The Visitor in the Holding Ward
The subterranean detention ward of the Cook County Department of Corrections in Chicago smelled of industrial floor wax, cold concrete, and bitter, rotting pride.
Samantha Cole sat on the edge of a stainless-steel cot bolted to the wall of her solitary cell, wearing an oversized orange institutional jumpsuit.
Her expensive manicure had been chipped down to the quick; her styled blonde hair was unwashed, hanging in stringy tangles across her pale, sallow face. Her wrists and ankles were secured with heavy steel transport chains.
The heavy steel slider door buzzed open with a loud hydraulic clank.
Clarissa Robinson walked into the cell.
I did not hurry. My leather dress boots clicked rhythmically against the concrete with a slow, deliberate cadence. I wore an elegant camel-hair coat over my charcoal suit, my posture commanding, sovereign, and entirely unbothered.
Samantha flinched back against the concrete wall, her bloodshot eyes widening in a mixture of feral hatred and visceral terror.
"You came to gloat," Samantha spat, her voice cracking into a dry, hoarse rasp.
"I came to look at you, Samantha," I said softly, stopping three paces from the cot. "I wanted to see what six years of calculated cruelty looked like when the curtain was finally pulled back."
"You were always so self-righteous, Clarissa!" Samantha hissed, leaping to her feet, her transport chains rattling violently against the steel belt around her waist. "You were a pathetic front-desk clerk scrubbing toilets at night! I was the one who gave you social status! I invited you to The Violet Tower! I gave you the dare that put you in Luca's bed! You should be thanking me on your knees!"
"You didn't give me a dare, Samantha," I replied, my eyes locking onto hers with freezing clarity. "You set a trap with two corrupt cops to steal my mother’s name, and you dared me to kiss the only man in Chicago who was powerful enough to tear your father's kingdom down. You thought that because I was poor, I was stupid. You thought that because I was patient, I was powerless."
I reached into my coat pocket, pulling out a copy of the morning's unsealed federal grand jury indictment.
I dropped the heavy document onto the steel cot.
"Arthur Vance signed a full plea-allocution at sunrise, Samantha," I said. "He detailed every offshore transaction, every staged medical lien, and the fact that you selected The Violet Tower specifically to facilitate my framing."
Samantha’s breath hitched in her throat. She looked down at the thirty-four felony counts listed on the parchment, her hands shaking so violently that the paper fluttered against her knees.
"Arthur... confessed?" she whispered, her voice finally breaking into a pathetic, terrified whimper.
"Arthur saved himself, Samantha," I answered quietly. "Just as you tried to save yourself at my table. The Cole estate has been completely liquidated by the federal receivership, and your luxury candle company has a balance of zero."
Samantha collapsed onto the cot, burying her face in her cuffed hands, weeping with the raw, ugly agony of a woman who had realized that her vanity had left her completely alone in the dark.
"Clarissa... please," she sobbed through her fingers. "We were friends in school... think of the years we spent together... tell the prosecutor to drop the narcotics conspiracy counts..."
I looked at the broken woman on the cot.
The girl who had mocked my secondhand clothes and counted my hours of labor was gone forever, replaced by an empty shell whose greed had incinerated her own soul.
"You had six years of chances, Samantha," I whispered softly. "And you traded them for a dare."
I turned my back on the broken socialite.
May you like
"Guard," I called out.
The heavy steel door slid open, and I walked down the echoing corridor into the bright morning sunshine of Chicago, leaving Samantha Cole to weep in the concrete shadows where she would remain for eighteen years.
