The sound of Silas Varelli’s hand striking his wife was so sharp that the twelve people seated around the Christmas table seemed to stop breathing at the same time.

Two weeks after the SEC raid, the temperature in Manhattan dropped to single digits.

In a small, windowless interrogation room at the Metropolitan Detention Center, Sabrina Cole sat in an orange jumpsuit, her hands cuffed to the metal table. Her hair was greasy, her makeup gone, her face pale and sunken.

Across the table sat Laurel, accompanied by Marcus Vance and a senior federal prosecutor.

Sabrina looked up at Laurel, her eyes filled with a mixture of raw hatred and pathetic, frantic desperation.

"You think you're so smart, don't you?" Sabrina spat, her voice raspy. "You think you won because you put Grant in jail and froze Silas's money?"

Laurel sat calmly, holding a hot cup of tea in a paper cup. "I didn't do any of that, Sabrina. You and Grant did it to yourselves. I simply read the ledger."

"Silas loved me!" Sabrina yelled, rattling her cuffs against the table. "He hated coming home to you! He told me you were cold, that you were boring, that you held him back!"

Laurel took a slow sip of her tea, completely unmoved by the insult. "Silas liked the idea of you because you didn't know who he was before he had money. You believed every story he told you about himself. But when the light came on, you realized you were just a tool Grant used to keep him stupid while he stole fourteen million dollars."

Sabrina’s mouth opened, but no words came out. Tears of anger spilled down her face.

"The prosecutor is offering you a plea bargain, Sabrina," Laurel said, setting her cup down. "Five years in a federal prison instead of fifteen for money laundering. But it requires your complete, sworn testimony against Grant Varelli and his offshore associates."

Sabrina stared at the paper Vance pushed across the table. Her hands trembled violently as she picked up the pen.

"Is... is Silas going to jail?" Sabrina whispered, looking at Laurel with a strange, lingering envy.

"Silas isn't facing criminal charges," Laurel replied flatly. "He was a fool, not a co-conspirator. The government knows Grant forged his signatures."

"Then he gets to keep everything?" Sabrina demanded bitterly.

Laurel stood up, smoothing her coat. "Silas lost the only thing he ever had that was real. He doesn't have anything left."

Laurel walked out of the detention center, stepping into the freezing afternoon air. Her driver—Marco, who had quit Silas's service two days after Christmas to work exclusively for Celeste and Laurel—opened the door of the sedan for her.

"Where to, Mrs. Varelli?" Marco asked respectfully.