Chapter 6 - The Unraveling of Brielle Sutton
While federal agents were conducting their systematic cataloging of Evan Cross’s office files on the forty-fourth floor, twenty miles away in a high-end Gold Coast luxury apartment, Brielle Sutton was experiencing a very different kind of reality check.
She stood in the middle of a sprawling, sunlit living room with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Lake Michigan, frantically packing designer shoes into a Louis Vuitton duffel bag. Her hands were shaking so badly she dropped a pair of Christian Louboutin pumps onto the hardwood floor.
Her phone had been ringing continuously for twenty minutes.
When she finally snatched it off the marble kitchen island, her public relations agency’s senior partner was screaming through the speaker.
“Brielle, are you watching the news? Your apartment building lobby is swarmed with reporters! Clients are pulling contracts by the minute! Effective immediately, your firm is dropping your representation, and your name is being scrubbed from every active campaign we manage!”
“Wait, stop, listen to me!” Brielle shrieked into the phone, tears of humiliation springing to her eyes. “Evan said he was a billionaire! He promised me he was going to divorce his wife and set up a foundation partnership for my firm! I didn't know he was embezzling—!”
“We don't care what you knew, Brielle,” the partner snapped coldly. “You built your entire brand around being a high-society luxury influencer tied to the Cross-Halston corporate circle. Now that circle is going to federal prison. Don't call this office again.”
The line went dead with a harsh, terminal beep.
Brielle threw the phone against the wall, where it shattered into pieces against the custom plaster. She ran to the floor-to-ceiling window, looking down at the street below.
A sleek black sedan was parked at the curb. Two federal investigators in dark suits were walking up the stone steps of her building lobby carrying federal subpoena documents bearing her name as a primary beneficiary of corporate embezzlement funds.
The dream was over. The fairy tale spun by a married man in an expensive suit had collided with the unyielding reality of a woman whose family owned the very ground he walked on.
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Brielle sank slowly to the floor, pulling her knees up to her chest as the morning sun beat down mercilessly through the glass, illuminating every single piece of her ruined ambition.
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