Chapter 6 - The Shadows of the Past
While Brynn was building her new life in the sunlit penthouse, the ruins of the Sutherland name were rotting in the dark. Weston sat behind the heavy steel mesh of the county holding facility, wearing a standard orange jumpsuit that swallowed his once-tailored frame. The cell reeked of disinfectant and stale despair.
His high-priced defense attorney, hired before his assets were frozen, had already dropped his case once the retainer bounced due to frozen bank accounts.
“You have a visitor, Sutherland,” a guard muttered, banging a nightstick against the bars.
Weston dragged himself to the meeting room, expecting a public defender or perhaps a debt collector. Instead, sitting across the plexiglass divider in a cheap polyester blouse was his mother. Marguerite looked ten years older, her makeup smudged, her royal posture completely shattered.
“Mother,” Weston spat, gripping the plastic phone handset. “What are you doing here? Where are the lawyers? Why haven’t you fixed this?”
Marguerite’s eyes were bloodshot. “Fixed this? Weston, they took everything. They evicted me from the apartment on Maple Street this morning. My accounts are locked. Our friends—the people we invited to my birthday, the ones we dined with every weekend—they won't even answer my calls. They block my number the second I ring.”
“Then sell something!” Weston slammed his palm against the glass, his face twisting with rage. “Sell the boutique! Liquidate the warehouse!”
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“There is nothing to sell!” Marguerite shrieked back, her voice cracking with hysteria as other inmates and visitors turned to stare. “Brynn owns it all! The courts ruled that the initial capital used to found the business came from an account in her maiden name that we fraudulently transferred. She legally dismantled us from the inside out. We are homeless, Weston. Your mother is homeless!”
Weston dropped the phone, sliding slowly down the wall until he hit the cold linoleum floor. For the first time in his life, the reality of what he and his mother had done—and what they had carelessly thrown away—crushed down on him with absolute, unyielding finality.
