Chapter 12 - The Ink of Treason
Cole stared at the document sitting on the marble floor before him. A heavy Montblanc pen—the very pen Nora had gifted him for his thirty-fifth birthday—lay beside it.
His hand trembled violently as he reached for it.
The silence in the room was suffocating. Malcolm Devereux watched him with open disgust. Walter Grange looked at him as if he were a cockroach waiting to be crushed beneath a boot.
"Nora..." Cole whispered, looking up one last time, searching for even a fraction of the woman who used to straighten his tie before dinner parties, the woman who used to softly ask if he wanted his tea hot or iced.
There was nothing there. Only Miss Bellamy.
"Three years," Cole croaked. "Did you ever feel anything for me? Even for a second?"
Nora looked down at him. "Every time you touched me, Cole, I felt the cold water of the East River filling my father’s lungs."
Cole flinched as though he had been whipped.
He gripped the pen. The metal was heavy and cold in his fingers. With shaking strokes, he signed his name across the bottom of the confession: *Cole Thomas Maddox.*
The moment the ink settled, Julian Vance reached down and pulled the paper away, checking the signature with an expert eye before sliding it into an evidence sleeve.
"Dennis," Nora said.
"Yes, ma'am?"
"Contact the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Tell him the Bellamy Trust has secured the state’s primary witness against Victor Sterling. Have the federal marshals enter through the private basement garage. No press. No sirens."
"Understood," Dennis replied, stepping forward and hauling Cole to his feet by his arm.
Cole didn't resist. His legs dragged uselessly beneath him as Dennis pulled him toward the door. As the heavy mahogany panels swung open, Cole looked back over his shoulder.
"Sterling won't go down quietly, Nora!" Cole cried out, his voice echoing through the corridor. "He has politicians! He has judges! He will burn this whole city down before he lets you take his throne!"
"Let him try," Nora replied softly. "I have already bought the matches."
May you like
The doors closed, cutting off Cole Maddox from the world he had pretentiously tried to claim as his own.
***