Chapter 9 - The Fall of Whitmore
Six months later.
The Cook County Women’s Correctional Facility sat on the outer edge of the city, surrounded by double chain-link fences topped with razor wire.
Inside the stark, gray visitation room, Charlotte Whitmore sat behind a thick panel of bulletproof glass. Her platinum hair was gone, replaced by dull, graying roots cut into an uneven bob. She wore a faded orange inmate jumpsuit, her fingernails short and unpolished, her face lined with deep wrinkles of bitterness and exhaustion.
The heavy steel door on the visitor’s side opened.
Jane walked into the room, wearing a tailored cream wool coat, dark sunglasses, and diamond earrings that caught the harsh fluorescent light. She looked radiant, powerful, and utterly beyond Charlotte’s reach.
Jane sat down on the stool, picked up the intercom receiver, and waited.
Charlotte grabbed her receiver with shaking, pale hands, pressing it to her ear. Her voice crackled through the small speaker, bitter and full of poison.
"Have you come to laugh at me?" Charlotte spat. "Have you come to flaunt your stolen wealth in my face?"
"Nothing here is stolen, Charlotte," Jane replied smoothly through the receiver. "It was all returned to its rightful owner."
"You think you're a queen now, don't you?" Charlotte sneered, her eyes burning with hatred. "You're playing house with a mobster! You're living in a world of criminals and murderers!"
"I am living in a world where loyalty matters," Jane corrected calmly. "A world where people protect their family instead of selling them for two million dollars."
Charlotte slammed her hand against the bulletproof glass, leaving a greasy smudge. "I made you! Without me, you would have been buried in a ditch twenty-three years ago!"
"You didn't make me, Charlotte," Jane said, leaning closer to the glass, her dark eyes flashing with cold, absolute victory. "You kept me in the dark. But all you did was give me twenty-two years to watch you, study you, and learn every single one of your weaknesses. You taught me how to be ruthless. You just forgot to make sure I wouldn't use it against you."
Jane pulled a legal document from her purse and pressed it against the glass.
It was a final deed of sale.
"Your estate on Astor Street has been demolished," Jane informed her. "I had the house knocked down yesterday. In its place, the Arthur and Clara Ross Foundation is constructing a twenty-story shelter and educational facility for exploited women and children."
Charlotte’s face twisted in horror. "My house... you destroyed my home..."
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"It was never a home, Charlotte," Jane said, standing up from her stool. "It was a prison. And now it’s going to heal the people you tried to break."
Jane hung up the intercom receiver. She turned her back on Charlotte’s silent, screaming rants against the glass, walking out of the visitation room with slow, graceful steps.
