Chapter 5 - THE COLD REALITY
By midnight, the Grand Ballroom was empty, but the war was only moving into its next theater.
Inside a cramped, fluorescent-lit police cruiser parked three blocks from the hotel, Brendan Alcott sat staring blankly through the steel partition. He hadn't been formally booked into jail yet—Ashworth had allowed him a temporary twelve-hour window to retrieve personal non-corporate items from a staging locker—but he had been evicted, stripped, and dumped onto the rainy pavement like an expired lease.
Beside him on the curb, sitting on two aluminum Samsonite suitcases, was Claire. Her designer fur coat was soaked from the drizzle, her mascara smeared across her wrinkled cheeks.
“Call the governor, Brendan!” Claire wailed for the fiftieth time, her voice shrill and hoarse. “You gave his campaign five hundred thousand dollars last fall! He owes you! Call Marcus Vance! Call anyone!”
“Mom, shut up!” Brendan screamed, his hands tearing through his wet hair. “Shut up! The governor took checks from *Pinnacle Enterprises*, not Brendan Alcott! Sydney owns the company! The money was hers!”
“She’s a housewife!” Claire shrieked, kicking one of the suitcases. “She can’t just snap her fingers and take our lives! What about the house in Aspen? What about your yacht in Cabo?!”
Brendan groaned, pressing his palms into his eyes. “They’re all titled under the McCann Master Trust, Mom! Everything! The cars, the club memberships, the credit lines! I didn't own any of it! She let me play with it to see if I’d steal!”
“And you stole?!” Claire shrieked in horror. “Why did you buy that little whore an eight-million-dollar necklace?!”
“One point eight!” Brendan barked defensively. “And Sabrina said it was an investment! She said her uncle on the zoning commission would fast-track the harbor permits!”
“Her uncle is a retired postman!” a voice shouted from across the street.
Brendan looked up.
Sabrina was marching toward them, wearing an oversized gray hooded sweatshirt and cheap sweatpants provided by the hotel’s lost-and-found. Her designer gown and heels had been confiscated by the bailiffs. She looked twenty years older, shivering in the cold, clutching a cheap paper shopping bag holding her makeup kit.
“You lied to me!” Sabrina screamed, lunging at Brendan and pounding her fists against his chest. “You told me you were worth four hundred million! You told me you owned the whole damn city! I gave up my consulting firm for you! Now federal agents are searching my apartment!”
Brendan shoved her back onto the wet asphalt. “You gave up your firm?! You were sleeping with three other developers before you met me, Sabrina! You bled my accounts dry! You picked out that ruby necklace!”
“Because you said you were the king!” Sabrina wept, sitting in the puddle, her hair plastered to her cheeks. “You’re not a king! You’re an unemployed fraud with bad credit!”
Claire stepped forward, raising her manicured hand to slap Sabrina, but Sabrina caught Claire’s wrist and twisted it viciously, sending the elderly woman stumbling into the gutter.
“Don't touch me, you old vulture!” Sabrina hissed. “Your son’s life is over. And I’m going to the District Attorney first thing in the morning. I’m giving them every text, every wire transfer, every offshore memo. I’m not spending five years in federal prison for your little boy’s ego!”
Sabrina scrambled to her feet, flagged down a passing yellow cab with her last twenty-dollar bill, and climbed inside, leaving mother and son alone on the dark sidewalk.
Brendan reached into his coat pocket and pulled out his private personal phone—the only device not connected to the corporate server. He tapped on his banking app.
His personal checking account, completely unattached to Pinnacle, had a balance of: **$4,112.40.**
That was it. That was the entirety of his life’s savings. For five years, he had lived so extravagantly off Pinnacle’s expense accounts, corporate credit lines, and company-owned estates that he had never bothered to save actual cash. Why save when you believe you own an inexhaustible gold mine?
His phone buzzed. A text message appeared from an unknown number.
He clicked it.
It was an attachment: an eviction notice posted on the heavy wrought-iron gates of the La Jolla estate. Below the photo was a single sentence from Andrew Ashworth:
*“Your personal wardrobe and two crates of family books have been delivered to the Public Storage facility on 4th Street. Your locker unit is #304. The rent is paid through the end of the month. After that, your balance is sixty dollars per thirty days. Have a pleasant evening, Mr. Alcott.”*
Brendan dropped the phone onto the concrete. The screen cracked across the middle, severing the text in two.
May you like
He sank down onto the curb beside his mother, the rain soaking through his three-thousand-dollar tuxedo, listening to Claire weep into the cold, indifferent night.
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