Chapter 7 - Allison’s Awakening
Three days later, Allison Mercer was granted supervised pretrial release under electronic monitoring, thanks to a medical plea arranged by her exhausted public defender. She had no passport, no money, and nowhere to go.
She stood outside the federal detention center in the freezing autumn rain, wearing a cheap coat purchased for her by a legal aid charity.
Her phone had been returned to her, but her cellular service had been terminated. She found an open Wi-Fi network outside a nearby diner and opened her social media accounts.
The devastation was absolute.
Her high-society friends from the country club had blocked her. The charity committee she chaired had issued a public press release condemning her actions and revoking her membership. Her personal blog, where she had bragged about her luxurious lifestyle and "reinventing herself," was flooded with thousands of comments mocking her downfall.
And then she saw the news article from the *St. Louis Business Journal*:
**MERCER DISTRIBUTION SECURES $85M DEFENSE EXPANSION; CEO DANIEL MERCER ANNOUNCES MASSIVE FLEET EXPANSION.**
Below the headline was a photograph of Daniel.
He was standing beside the Governor and the Director of the Department of Transportation, cutting a ceremonial ribbon at a new logistics tech facility. He looked commanding, powerful, and utterly out of her reach.
She looked closer at the photo. On Daniel’s lapel was a discreet silver pin—the founder’s crest of Mercer Logistics.
For eight years, she had looked down on him. She had treated him like an inconvenient utility bill, someone who paid for her Pilates classes, her designer handbags, and her trips to Aspen while she complained to her friends about his lack of "emotional danger."
She had traded an empire for a con man with a leased sports car and a rental yacht.
Her trembling fingers opened her contacts. Daniel had changed his personal number, but she knew the direct landline to his private office.
May you like
She walked into the diner, borrowed the counter phone under the hostile glare of the waitress, and dialed the number she had known by heart for a decade.
***
