Chapter 8 - The Stripping of the Feathers
The glass-walled conference room felt like an execution chamber.
Lavinia stood frozen, her hands hovering above the back of an empty leather chair, her chest hitching as if she had forgotten how to breathe. Outside the glass, twenty-five of her colleagues—the very people she had spent years patronizing with fabricated stories of eight-figure listings and private jets—pressed close to the partitions, watching her downfall with poorly disguised satisfaction.
"Terminated?" Lavinia squeaked, the sound high, thin, and pathetic. "You... you can't terminate me! I am the top-producing luxury agent in this division!"
"You haven't closed a transaction exceeding four hundred thousand dollars in fourteen months, Lavinia," I said, my voice cutting through the room with clinical precision. I opened a leather-bound folder before me, tapping a column of red numbers with the tip of my pen. "Your desk costs this firm eighteen hundred dollars a month in commercial floor space. Your marketing allowances have exceeded your generated gross commission splits by forty-two thousand dollars over the last two fiscal quarters."
"That was an investment in my brand!" she shrieked, her face turning an ugly, blotchy crimson beneath her expensive foundation. "Julian, tell her! You approved those marketing budgets! You know that luxury real estate takes time!"
"I approved them because you told me you had Soren Vale under an exclusive representation mandate, Lavinia," Julian Cole said, his voice flat and bitter. "And twenty minutes ago, Mr. Vale’s corporate counsel delivered a formal cease-and-desist letter to this office, stating that if you ever contact his investment fund, his employees, or his family again, he will file a commercial harassment suit against this brokerage."
Lavinia staggered backward, her shoulder hitting the glass doorframe. "Soren... no. That's a lie. He loved my presentation! He came to dinner at our house!"
"He came to dinner to meet his primary financial consultant, Lavinia," Uncle Baxter spoke up, leaning back in his chair with his arms crossed over his broad chest. "The consultant who actually understands how commercial debt works. The consultant who just bought your company."
Lavinia’s eyes darted frantically between Baxter, Julian, and finally settled on me. The sheer, incomprehensible reality of her total defeat was finally breaking through her narcissistic armor.
"You did this," she whispered, her voice trembling with poisonous hatred. "You planned this whole thing. You set me up."
"You set yourself up, Lavinia," I replied, rising slowly to my feet and looking down at her across the walnut table. "You bought a hundred-and-twenty-thousand-dollar car with a forged signature. You ran up forty thousand dollars of retail debt on credit cards that didn't belong to you. You lived like a queen on the money I earned waking up at five in the morning, and when I refused to finance your next lie, you took a leather belt to my face."
I pointed to the butterfly bandage on my lower lip.
"Under Section 8-B of the North Carolina Real Estate Commission licensing standards," I continued, "any licensed broker charged with a felony crime of violence or moral turpitude is subject to immediate administrative suspension pending formal commission review. Your arrest yesterday for domestic battery and assault with a deadly weapon was reported to the licensing board at eight o'clock this morning."
Lavinia gasped, her hand flying to her chest. "My license... you reported my license?!"
"I didn't report it," Orson Price stated smoothly. "The Mecklenburg County Clerk of Court automatically transmits all felony domestic indictments to state licensing bodies under the mandatory disclosure protocols. Your real estate credentials have been placed into inactive status. You cannot legally represent a buyer, solicit a listing, or collect a single penny of commission anywhere in this state."
"And your desk," I added, nodding toward the open-plan office where two building security guards were already placing cardboard storage boxes onto her glass workstation, "is currently being cleared. You have ten minutes to collect your personal effects and surrender your building access keycard."
"Where am I supposed to go?!" Lavinia wailed, tears finally bursting through her mascara, streaming down her cheeks in dark, ruinous rivers. "I don't have any money! My bank accounts are frozen! My car—"
"Your car was repossessed three hours ago, Lavinia," I said, my tone completely devoid of pity. "It’s currently sitting in an impound lot in North Charlotte. If you want to get home to Quail Hollow, I suggest you download a rideshare app. Assuming, of course, you have a credit card that hasn't been declined for fraud."
A strangled, animal sob tore from Lavinia’s throat.
May you like
She turned on her designer heels, threw open the conference room door, and ran through the lobby with her head down, clutching her purse to her chest as thirty agents watched in dead silence.
The heavy glass doors slammed shut behind her, leaving the office of Fairmont & Cole peaceful, professional, and entirely under my command.
