Chapter 17: Echoes in the Concrete
While the sun shone brightly over the South Carolina coast, the federal penitentiary in West Virginia was wrapped in an endless, suffocating gloom.
Margaret Prescott sat on the edge of a narrow, steel-framed bunk inside Cell Block 4B. The luxury silk blouses and diamond earrings were gone, replaced by a coarse orange jumpsuit that scratched against her aging skin. Her hair, once meticulously styled and dyed, was completely gray, falling limp around a face deeply etched with bitterness and regret.
The heavy steel door clanged open. A guard banged a nightstick against the bars.
"Prescott! Visitor. Booth 3," the guard grunted flatly.
Margaret didn't move for a long moment. Ever since the trials concluded, visitors had been practically nonexistent. Her high-society friends had vanished like smoke in the wind. Her political allies pretended they had never met her. Even her eldest son, Brandon, serving a ten-year sentence in a minimum-security facility three states away, had refused to answer her letters.
Slowly, she stood up, shuffled her plastic sandals across the cold concrete floor, and followed the guard down the sterile, echoing corridor.
She sat down in the visitor booth, picking up the heavy plastic telephone receiver. On the other side of the thick, scratched Plexiglas sat a man she hadn't expected to see: her former lead corporate attorney, who had managed to plea-bargain his way out of an indictment by handing over the last remaining shadow portfolios.
Margaret pressed the receiver to her ear, her voice shaking with a pathetic thread of hope. "Did you find a loophole? Did the appellate court accept our motion for a retrial?"
The attorney looked at her through the glass with total, unmasked pity. It was a look that cut deeper than any insult.
"There are no loopholes, Margaret," he said quietly. "The SEC motions were denied. The RICO convictions are ironclad. And as of this morning, the federal government auctioned off the final remaining land trust in downtown Charlotte. Prescott Enterprises is officially dissolved. Your name has been completely expunged from the corporate registry."
Margaret’s hand trembled so violently she nearly dropped the receiver. "And Ethan? What about my son? How is Ethan handling maximum security?"
The attorney sighed, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. "Ethan was transferred to the general population facility in Edgefield yesterday, Margaret. Without protection... without money to buy safety... he’s struggling. He’s completely broken down."
Margaret stared blankly through the glass, her breath fogging the plastic surface.
She had spent her entire life accumulating wealth, crushing rivals, and building an untouchable fortress of power, convinced that money was the ultimate shield against the world. Now, sitting in a cold concrete box, she realized the horrifying truth of her own design: she hadn't built an empire at all. She had built a prison, and she had locked herself inside it for eternity.
"Get out," Margaret whispered, her voice cracking.
"Margaret—"
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"I said, get out!" she screamed, slamming the receiver onto the hook.
The guards rushed in immediately, pinning her arms behind her back and dragging her kicking and screaming back down the gray corridor. The queen of Charlotte had finally fallen all the way to the floor, and there was no one left to pick her up.
