Chapter 7 - The Silence of Agnes Holden
The Savannah Women's Detention Center sat on a flat, salt-marsh peninsula ten miles outside the city, where the wind always smelled of mud and dead grass.
Agnes Holden sat at the metal table in the visitor’s room, her orange jumpsuit looking bright and garish under the harsh fluorescent lights. She had no makeup now; her face was a map of deep, bitter lines, her gray hair tangled and unwashed. Her hands, once so perfectly manicured, were rough and stained from the laundry work she had been assigned.
The door opened, and Thomas Sterling walked into the room. He was dressed in a dark grey suit, carrying a single, white paper folder. He didn't sit down. He stood near the door, his eyes cold and professional.
"What do you want, Sterling?" Agnes spat, her voice raspy from a week of screaming at the guards. "If you came here to offer a plea deal, tell your brother he can go to hell. I'm not signing anything."
"I didn't come to offer a deal, Agnes," Thomas said, setting the folder on the table. "I came to deliver the final order from the probate court."
"What order?"
"The court has officially revoked your guardianship rights over any and all assets associated with the Moore estate," Thomas said. "The trust’s funding for your defense has been terminated. Your personal accounts have been seized under the federal civil forfeiture order."
Agnes's breath caught in her throat. "They can't do that. That money was my husband's estate—"
"Your husband's estate was built on the money he stole from Arthur's harbor development project," Thomas said. "Every dollar, Agnes. The house in Savannah, the Cadillac you drove, the diamonds you wore to the court—they were all purchased with funds transferred from the shell companies. You have nothing left."
"I have Mark," she hissed. "He’ll get out. He’s smart. He’ll find a way to—"
"Mark signed a confession twenty minutes ago, Agnes," Thomas said, his voice dropping to a flat, dead level. "In exchange for a thirty-year sentence at the federal facility in Jessup, he’s agreed to testify against you. He’s told them everything. He’s told them how you bought the Contraction-inducing herbs from the clinic in Miami. He’s told them how you mixed them with the vitamins."
Agnes’s face went pale. Her hand reached for her throat, but there was no gold cross there now—only the cheap plastic ID badge of the prison.
"He... he wouldn't," she whispered, her voice cracking. "I am his mother. I did everything for him. I gave him that life..."
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"He did what he’s always done, Agnes," Thomas said, turning back toward the door. "He saved himself. He’s a Holden. And Holdens don't have partners—they only have accomplices."
He walked out of the room, the heavy steel door clicking shut behind him with a sound that seemed to echo in the damp, salt air of the prison for a very long time.
