Chapter 13 - THE JAILHOUSE CONSPIRACY
The Federal Correctional Institution in Rhode Island smelled of industrial floor stripper, cold steel, and despair.
I was led through three sets of electronically buzzing gates, escorted by two silent guards with sidearms, into a private interrogation room. There were no polished marble floors here, no panoramic skylines. Just a bolted stainless-steel table and two matching chairs.
Five minutes later, the far door clicked open.
Arthur Prescott stepped inside, his wrists handcuffed in front of him.
The contrast between the man who had once ruled Prescott Global and the figure standing before me was grotesque. The bespoke Italian suits were gone, replaced by a drab, faded orange jumpsuit that hung loosely on his frame. His thick, styled hair had been roughly buzzed down to the scalp, peppered with far more gray than I remembered. His skin was sallow, his posture defeated.
Yet, when his bloodshot eyes locked onto mine, a familiar, ugly sneer crept across his mouth.
"Look at you," Arthur rasped, sitting down heavily across from me as the guard secured his chains to the table ring. "The grand Chairwoman. Come to gloat over the carcass?"
"Gloating requires an adversary worthy of respect, Arthur," I said evenly, resting my manicured hands flat on the cold metal. "You were never an adversary. You were merely an obstruction that required clearing."
His jaw clenched, the muscles working furiously beneath his hollow cheeks. "You think you won. You took my company, you took my penthouse, you turned my board against me. But you forgot one thing, Elena."
"Did I?"
"You forgot that I didn't build Prescott Global alone," he hissed, leaning forward as far as his chains allowed, the metallic links clattering sharply. "My father had allies. Powerful men. Men who look at you—a woman who stole her grandfather's scraps—and see an infection that needs to be burned out."
"Sterling & Croft filed an injunction this morning," I stated, watching his micro-expressions carefully. "They’re demanding that Vanguard’s acquisition of Prescott assets be suspended pending a federal review. Who is paying them, Arthur?"
Arthur burst into a dry, hacking laugh. It was a pathetic sound, devoid of humor, saturated in malice.
"You really don't know, do you?" he mocked, his eyes glittering with spiteful triumph. "You think you’re so brilliant, Elena. You think you calculated every variable. But you don't even know who owns the debt on your own family's blood."
"Tell me, Arthur. Or I instruct the U.S. Attorney to add five counts of tax evasion from your shell companies in Panama. That adds twelve years to your sentencing."
Arthur’s laughter died instantly. A shadow of terror flickered in his gaze, but it was quickly replaced by something far more dangerous: fanaticism.
"It doesn't matter what you do to me," he whispered, his voice trembling with manic intensity. "He’s already here. He’s been here since before our wedding day. And when he tears Vanguard out of your hands, you won't even have an orange suit to sleep in. You'll be in the dirt."
I studied him for three agonizing seconds.
He didn't know the full plan. Arthur was merely the broken pawn, discarded by someone larger who was now using his legal remnants to distract me while Boreas Marine moved on the Pacific.
I stood up, smoothing the fabric of my charcoal trench coat.
May you like
"Enjoy your lunch, Arthur," I said coldly, turning toward the heavy steel door. "Because whoever is pulling your strings will abandon you the moment your appeal is denied. And when they do, you won't even have the luxury of my pity."
***
