Chapter 8 - The Aftermath
The rain outside had stopped by the time Gabriel staggered out of the Bennett-Standard Building and stumbled into the underground parking garage.
The air smelled of exhaust fumes and damp concrete.
He walked blindly toward the unmarked sedan where he had left Vanessa. His legs felt heavy, his mind completely blank, as if his identity had been surgically removed from his body.
He reached the car and pulled the passenger door open.
Vanessa was gone.
In her place on the passenger seat sat a single designer handbag—empty, its contents dumped haphazardly onto the floor mat—and a handwritten note scrawled on a parking ticket stub:
Don’t bother looking for me. My lawyer says your accounts are frozen anyway. Good luck.
Gabriel let out a dry, hacking laugh that echoed off the concrete pillars of the empty garage.
It was poetry, really. The mistress who loved his wallet had abandoned him the exact second the wallet was emptied. He was entirely alone, stripped of his power, his money, his name, and his illusion of control.
May you like
He turned and walked out of the garage into the bright, cold Baltimore daylight.
As he reached the sidewalk, a black city bus rumbled past, splashing dirty slush across his Italian leather shoes. He didn't curse. He didn't yell. He simply wiped the mud off with the back of his hand and kept walking down the pavement, heading nowhere in particular, becoming just another faceless shadow in a city that no longer remembered who he was.
