Chapter 10 - The Confrontation in the Holding Facility: Travis Breaks Completely
The subterranean holding facility beneath the Vale Estate smelled of damp stone, bleached concrete, and absolute despair.
Travis Mercer sat on a metal cot in the center of a small, reinforced holding cell, wearing a coarse gray jumpsuit that had replaced his expensive silk pajamas.
His hair was uncombed, his eyes were bloodshot from crying, and the arrogant, smug expression he had worn on Commonwealth Avenue felt like a lifetime ago.
The heavy steel door of his cell clicked open, and heavy footsteps echoed across the concrete floor.
Travis looked up, scrambling backward on the cot until his shoulders hit the cold stone wall as I walked into the cell, flanked by Graham Pierce.
“Evie…?” Travis whispered, his voice cracking horribly. “Evie, please… get me out of here. This place is insane… they won’t let me talk to a lawyer, they won’t let me use a phone…”
“You don’t need a lawyer, Travis,” I said calmly, stopping just outside the iron bars of the cell. “You need a mirror.”
“I’m sorry! I’m so, so sorry!” Travis sobbed, sliding off the cot and crawling on his hands and knees to the metal bars, gripping them with white-knuckled desperation. “It was Paige! Paige manipulated me! She told me you were holding me back from my true potential! She poisoned my mind, Evie!”
“Paige Holloway is currently sitting in a municipal holding cell facing ten years for financial conspiracy and reckless endangerment,” I informed him smoothly. “She doesn’t have time to listen to your excuses, and neither do I.”
“You’re pregnant with my child!” Travis shrieked, tears streaming down his face as he pressed his forehead against the cold iron bars. “How can you be this cold? How can you destroy my entire life over a moment of panic?”
“A moment of panic?” I repeated, my voice dropping an octave, carrying a cold, lethal fury that made even Travis stop crying for a fraction of a second. “You didn’t panic, Travis. You made a deliberate, calculated choice. You watched your mother throw my clothes into the mud, you listened to your mistress laugh at my heartbreak, and then you used both hands to shove a pregnant woman into oncoming traffic.”
Travis opened his mouth, but no words came out; the undeniable truth of his violence hung in the air between us like a executioner's axe.
“You thought I was just a retail girl you could discard when a shinier toy came along,” I continued, stepping closer until I was inches from the bars. “You forgot that the world you lived in, the apartment you rented, the corporate ladder you climbed—every single brick of your mediocre existence was built on ground rented from my family.”
“What… what are you going to do to me?” Travis whispered, trembling so violently his teeth were chattering against each other. “Are you going to kill me?”
I let out a quiet, humorless laugh, shaking my head slightly.
“Kill you, Travis? Death is far too merciful for a parasite like you,” I said, looking down at him with absolute detachment. “You are going to live the rest of your life knowing that you had everything—a loyal wife, a child on the way, a comfortable future—and you traded it all for a social media influencer who deleted your phone number the second the federal marshals seized her bags.”
“Please… just let me go… I’ll leave Boston, I’ll never come back…” Travis begged, sinking down onto the concrete floor in a heap of broken sobs.
“Boston Mutual Mortgage was acquired by Vale Global Holdings at 2:00 PM today,” I told him, turning my back on the cell and walking toward the heavy steel exit. “You are legally bankrupt, professionally erased, and entirely forgotten.”
“Evie! Evie, don’t leave me here! EVIE!” Travis screamed, his voice echoing off the concrete walls as Graham slowly pulled the steel cell door shut and locked it with a resounding clank.
As we walked down the subterranean corridor toward the elevator leading back up to the estate, Graham glanced sideways at me.
May you like
“Shall we prepare the final press release for the business district, Miss Vale?” Graham asked respectfully.
I touched the silver sapphire star against my chest, feeling my daughter kick gently once more against my palm, a steady, powerful rhythm of new life rising from the ashes of the old.
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