Chapter 7 - The Scraps of Dignity
By two in the afternoon, Serena Pike was sitting in an interrogation room on the sub-level of the Bellamy Trust Building.
She looked hollowed out. Her designer clothes were ruined, her hair was a tangled mess, and she wore an oversized grey sweatshirt that Dennis Crowley had tossed to her at the motel. Her hands shook so badly that she couldn't lift the paper cup of water sitting on the metal table.
When the heavy door clicked open and Nora stepped in, Serena shrank back into her chair as if she expected to be beaten with an iron rod.
"Please," Serena sobbed, tears instantly streaming down her cheeks. "Please, Mrs. Maddox—Miss Bellamy—please don't kill me! I didn't know! I swear to God I didn't know who you were! Cole told me you were just a stupid, quiet girl he married for tax purposes! He told me you would never leave because you had nowhere else to go!"
Nora sat down across from her. There were no guards in the room, only Julian Vance standing silently by the closed door like a shadow carved from obsidian.
"Stop crying, Serena," Nora said calmly. "It gives me a headache, and your tears won't change the temperature of this room by half a degree."
Serena choked on a sob, clamping her hands over her mouth, trembling violently.
"I am not going to kill you," Nora said. "Killing you would be an insult to the bullets Julian carries."
"T-then what do you want?" Serena whispered.
"I want the black leather notebook Cole kept in the vanity drawer of your apartment on 72nd Street."
Serena’s eyes widened with pure terror. "How... how do you know about that?"
"Cole is a creature of habit," Nora explained, resting her hands on the table. "He never trusted his own memory, and he certainly didn't trust his phones. Whenever he met with Victor Sterling’s couriers, he wrote down the drop dates, the license plate numbers, and the account codes in a small, black Moleskine notebook. He kept it at your apartment because he believed I would never look there."
Serena swallowed hard. "If... if I give it to you... will you let me leave? Will you let me go home to Ohio?"
Nora leaned in slightly. "If you give me that notebook, Serena, I will give you a one-way first-class ticket to Columbus, ten thousand dollars in cash, and a clean slate. But if you lie to me, or if even one page is missing... I will hand you over to the Port Authority police with a file detailing your involvement in Cole’s offshore money laundering. You will spend the next fifteen years in a federal penitentiary in West Virginia. Do you understand that choice?"
"I'll get it!" Serena gasped, leaning forward so fast she nearly fell off her chair. "The key is hidden inside my makeup case! The notebook is under the floorboard behind the bathroom vanity! Cole made me swear never to touch it, but I saw where he put it! I swear I'll give it to you!"
Nora looked at Julian. "Take her. Retrieve the book."
"Yes, Miss Bellamy."
Julian stepped forward, grabbing Serena’s arm and lifting her to her feet. As she was being led toward the door, Serena stopped and looked back at Nora, her face pale, her lips trembling.
"Why?" Serena whispered. "Why did you let him humiliate you for three years? You could have crushed him at any time. Why let him treat you like dirt?"
Nora looked at the broken girl, her eyes as calm and cold as a frozen lake.
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"Because, Serena," Nora replied, "when you want to burn a forest down to the roots, you have to wait until the wood is completely dry."
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