Chapter 3 - The Wrath of a Scorned Socialite
The penthouse apartment of Harrison Cole, situated on the forty-fourth floor of a glass tower overlooking Inner Harbor, was a study in cold, minimalist wealth. The walls were grey Venetian plaster, the furniture was white leather, and the only art was a series of massive, aggressive black-and-white paintings that looked like oil spills on canvas.
Vanessa Cole stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows, her emerald dress discarded on the floor behind her like the skin of a shed snake. She wore a silk robe, her face pale and scrubbed clean of makeup, making her eyes look small and sharp beneath her perfect blonde hair.
"He threw me out," she said, her voice a flat, dangerous hiss. "In front of the mayor, Father. In front of the Gills, the Percys, the entire board of the historical society. He ordered me off the property as if I were a common thief."
Harrison Cole sat in a leather armchair, a glass of dark rum in his hand. He was a large man, his hair silver and his face lined with the hard, cynical geometry of a developer who had spent forty years bribing city inspectors and crushing labor unions. He did not look angry; he looked calculated.
"You let him see you cut the kid’s hair," Harrison said, taking a slow sip of his drink. "That was stupid, Vanessa. You’ve always had a temper, but doing it in public? At your own engagement party? You handed him the scissors to cut his own throat."
"The child was a nuisance!" Vanessa screamed, her hands clenching into fists. "And Maria Delgado... she looked at me, Father. She looked at me as if she were my equal. She stood up in front of those people and told me not to touch her daughter. In my own house!"
"It wasn't your house yet," Harrison said coldly. "And now, it never will be. The Whitfield merger is dead. The bank called me thirty minutes ago—they’ve already received a formal notice from Daniel’s attorneys that the harbor project’s capital accounts are being frozen pending 'restructuring.'"
Vanessa walked over to the glass table, her fingers tracing the edge of an iPad that lay open to the social pages of the Baltimore Sun. Already, the rumors were beginning to leak. Faint, polite whispers about a "sudden cancellation of the nuptials" due to "personal differences."
"I want them destroyed," Vanessa whispered. "Not just Daniel. I want that maid... I want that little parasite she brought into the house... I want them in the dirt. I want them so poor they have to beg for bread on the Pratt Street pier."
"Daniel is too big to hit directly," Harrison said, leaning forward. "He has the Whitfield name, he has the bank’s trust, and his mother was a saint in this city. If we go after him in the press, we look like the bitter losers of a high-society divorce. But the girl..."
A slow, ugly smile crept across his thin lips.
"The girl is a housekeeper from Perth Amboy," Harrison said. "She has no family, no money of her own, and a daughter with no father on the birth certificate. Why was she living in a billionaire’s mansion, Vanessa? Why was she there with her kid when the fiancée was away?"
Vanessa’s eyes widened, a cold, brilliant light returning to them. "Seduction."
"Exactly," Harrison nodded. "A devious, illegal immigrant’s daughter who used her position to worm her way into the bed of a grieving, vulnerable young billionaire. She targeted him, Vanessa. She used her kid as a prop to elicit his sympathy, got him to break off his engagement to a respectable woman of his own class, and now she’s trying to extort him for a multi-million-dollar settlement."
"We can file a police report," Vanessa said, her voice rising with excitement. "I left my sapphire necklace there—the one my grandmother gave me. The one worth eighty thousand dollars. I left it in the guest pantry after the fitting. If we tell the police that Maria Delgado stole it..."
"We don't just tell the police," Harrison said. "We tell Julian Thorne."
Julian Thorne was the chief editor of the Baltimore Ledger, a tabloid sheet that specialized in the salacious, ruinous secrets of the city's wealthy elite. He was a man who lived on a diet of black coffee and blackmail, and he owed Harrison Cole three favors from a real estate deal that had gone quiet five years ago.
"By tomorrow morning," Harrison said, standing up and walking over to his daughter, "the entire city will know that Daniel Whitfield has been brainwashed by his maid. They’ll know she’s a thief, a home-wrecker, and an extortionist. We’ll file the theft charges by noon. Let’s see how long Daniel’s saintly reputation lasts when his house is surrounded by police cruisers and reporters from the morning news."
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Vanessa smiled, her fingers touching her bare left ring finger where the diamond had been.
"I’ll personally watch them drag her out in handcuffs," she said.
