Chapter 6 - The Unraveling of Sabrina Cole
The Mecklenburg County jail had a smell that no amount of industrial bleach could erase: sour coffee, old sweat, and ruined lives.
Sabrina Cole sat in the visiting booth on Friday morning, staring through the scuffed Plexiglas partition. She wasn't wearing her bespoke cream coat or her Cartier bracelet. She wore an ill-fitting gray sweater she had bought at a discount department store with the last fifty dollars of cash she had scraped from her purse. Her hair was greasy, unwashed for two days, and her manicured nails were chipped and broken.
Across from her sat Grant Whitmore.
He looked infinitely worse.
His face was bruised from his collision with the gravel driveway; a white butterfly bandage covered the cut over his left eyebrow where the window glass had sliced him. He wore the bright orange jumpsuit of a maximum-security remand prisoner. Because he had attempted to burn down an occupied structure with an accelerant while violating an emergency restraining order, bail had been denied outright.
"You signed an affidavit," Grant said, his voice a dead, raspy whisper through the little metal speaker grille.
Sabrina flinched, pulling her sweater tighter around her trembling shoulders. "Grant... I didn't have a choice. The FBI showed up at my hotel room at six in the morning. They said I was facing fifteen years for money laundering."
"You whore," Grant hissed, his eyes burning with an icy, venomous hatred that made her shrink back against her plastic chair. "You begged me to take you away from David. You told me you loved me. You laid in my bed in Miami and told me I was twice the man David ever was."
"You told me you were rich!" she cried, her voice cracking, drawing sharp glances from the two sheriff’s deputies stationed by the exit. "You told me you owned the whole company! You told me that lake house was yours! You built an entire universe out of lies, Grant! You dragged me into this!"
Grant leaned against the partition, his breath fogging the plastic. "I gave you four hundred thousand dollars in cash, Sabrina. I bought you cars, jewelry, vacations. Where are they now?"
"David took everything!" she wept, tears cutting through the grime on her cheeks. "The cars were leased under the family office! The jewelry has been impounded by the federal marshals! I'm sleeping on an air mattress in my cousin's spare room in Concord, Grant! I have literally twelve dollars to my name!"
Grant let out a dry, cracked chuckle that sounded like bones rattling in an urn.
"Then you’re in the same boat I am, sweetheart," Grant said with a grotesque smirk. "Except I get three hot meals a day and a roof over my head. You get to walk around Charlotte watching every single person who used to kiss your feet cross the street so they don't have to look at you."
"Grant, please," she begged, leaning forward, pressing her hands against the plastic. "Your lawyer... you must have hidden cash somewhere. An offshore account in Nevis? A safety deposit box? Give me the key. I can get an attorney for you, I can help you fight Claire—"
"I don't have anything, you stupid little parasite," Grant snarled, his smile disappearing into raw malice. "Claire took the design patents. The company is in receivership. The bank seized my Porsche yesterday. The clothes you’re wearing are worth more than my entire net worth right now."
Sabrina stared at him, the final illusion of Grant Whitmore evaporating before her eyes.
There was no secret fortune. There was no hidden rescue fund. There was only a hollow, pathetic narcissist who had lived on borrowed money, borrowed talent, and borrowed time until the bill finally came due.
"You're a monster," she whispered.
"And you’re a nobody," Grant said. He picked up the black receiver and slammed it onto the metal cradle, then stood up and banged on the steel door for the guard to escort him back to his cell.
Sabrina sat in the plastic chair for a long time, the silence of the visitation room ringing in her ears, until a guard tapped his baton on the glass.
"Visiting time is over, ma'am. Move along."
She walked out of the jail into the biting gray chill of downtown Charlotte. The wind caught her hair, whipping it across her face.
Across the street, on the side of a modern office tower under construction, a massive banner hung six stories tall.
The old banner, which had read *WHITMORE DEVELOPMENT: DESIGNING TOMORROW*, had been completely cut down.
In its place, workers in high-visibility harnesses were hoisting a pristine new sign of brushed bronze and deep navy blue.
*ROWAN ARCHITECTURAL GROUP.*
*FOUNDER & PRINCIPAL ARCHITECT: CLAIRE ROWAN.*
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Sabrina stood on the cracked concrete sidewalk, hugging her cheap sweater around her chest, and realized that the world had already moved on without her.
***
