Chapter 5 - The Fall of the KingThe mugshot was published by midnight.
It didn't look like the confident CEO who had adjusted his cuffs under the courthouse awning twelve hours earlier. The man in the photograph looked haggard, his designer suit jacket wrinkled and stained with garage grease, his eyes wide and hollow with the horrifying realization that his entire fabricated empire had vanished into thin air.
Bail had been set at ten million dollars—cash only.
With every single bank account frozen by federal order, and with Savannah Cole cooperating with federal prosecutors in exchange for immunity, Derek Sloan had exactly zero people willing to post his bond.
He sat in a holding cell at the Mecklenburg County Detention Center, the fluorescent light above his head humming with a high-pitched whine that seemed to drill straight into his skull.
The heavy steel door clanked open.
A guard in a dark blue uniform stepped inside, holding a clipboard.
"Sloan. You've got a visitor."
Derek lifted his head, a pathetic spark of hope igniting in his chest. "Is it my new attorney? Did Charles Voss figure out a way around the asset freeze?"
"It's not an attorney," the guard said flatly. "Step to the glass."
Derek dragged himself off the aluminum bench, his orange jumpsuit feeling heavy and suffocating. He shuffled across the concrete floor to the visitation booth, sitting down on the bolted stool and picking up the heavy plastic telephone receiver.
On the other side of the thick plexiglass partition sat a woman in a navy dress.
She wasn't wearing designer jewelry. She wasn't surrounded by PR agents or legal teams. She wore the same plain silver watch she had worn that morning.
Mara.
Derek pressed his hand against the glass, his face twisting into a desperate, pathetic sneer.
"Mara! Thank God!" he cried into the receiver, his voice echoing through the intercom. "You have to help me! Your father—he's doing this out of spite! You know how he is, he's abusing his power! Call him, Mara! Tell him to drop the charges! We're husband and wife—we can fix this!"
Mara didn't pick up her receiver immediately. She simply sat there, looking at him through the smudged glass.
After a long, agonizing moment, she lifted her phone to her ear.
"We aren't husband and wife anymore, Derek," she said, her voice completely calm, devoid of anger, hatred, or sorrow. "The emergency annulment was signed by the family court clerk an hour ago. On the grounds of fraud and bigamy."
Derek froze. "Bigamy? What are you talking about? I was never married before you!"
"Not bigamy in the traditional sense," Mara replied evenly. "Though we did discover an unregistered marriage certificate in the Bahamas from three years ago involving you and Savannah Cole. But that's for the federal prosecutor to worry about."
She leaned slightly closer to the glass.
"The bigamy I'm referring to is the fact that you married Mara Mercer—the researcher, the partner, the woman who funded your life—while pretending to be a self-made visionary who looked down on everyone else."
Derek’s breathing turned shallow. "Mara... please. I'm ruined. They're taking everything. The penthouse, the cars, the company—"
"The company isn't yours to lose anymore," Mara corrected softly. "As of this morning, the board of directors voted unanimously to restructure Sloan Urban Systems under its original parent holding company: Mercer & Daughter Innovations."
Derek’s eyes went wide. He slammed his fist against the glass, the sound echoing sharply in the visiting room.
"You planned this! You planned all of it!"
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"No, Derek," Mara said, standing up and smoothing the skirt of her navy dress. She looked down at him with a gaze so profoundly indifferent that it hurt him more than any scream ever could. "I gave you fourteen years to be an honest man. You chose to be a fraud."
She placed her receiver back on its cradle, turned her back on him, and walked out of the visitation room without looking back once.
