Chapter 8 - The Broken Doll
That afternoon, I visited the federal detention center in Brooklyn.
I didn't request a meeting with Adrian.
I requested a meeting with Vanessa Vance.
She was brought into the small, concrete-walled interrogation room wearing a coarse khaki jumpsuit that hung loosely on her frame. The luxury, the arrogance, the polished cruelty she had displayed in the cathedral had vanished entirely. Her hair was greasy, pinned back with a plastic comb, her skin sallow and blotchy from continuous crying.
She sat down across the metal table, the chains around her wrists clinking against the steel.
When she looked up and saw me sitting there—wearing a sharp, charcoal-gray wool coat, pristine diamond studs, and the cold serenity of absolute power—her lip began to tremble.
“Are you here to gloat?” Vanessa whispered, her voice hoarse and raw.
“No, Vanessa,” I replied, opening my leather folder and taking out a document. “I’m here to offer you an eviction notice.”
She frowned, bewildered. “What?”
“Adrian had you sign a general power of attorney six months ago, didn't he?” I asked. “When he bought that four-story townhouse on the Upper East Side—the one you lived in? He told you it was a gift.”
Vanessa swallowed hard, nodding slowly. “He said it was our future home.”
“It was never your home,” I said, sliding the title deed across the table. “He purchased that property using funds stolen from my father’s logistics division. Under the civil forfeiture settlement approved by the bankruptcy court two hours ago, that property has been seized by Montgomery Industries.”
Vanessa began to cry, covering her face with her cuffed hands. “I have nothing left, Clara. Nothing. They froze my mother’s accounts. My uncle is facing thirty years. Adrian hasn't called me once since he was arrested. Not once!”
“Of course he hasn't,” I said softly. “Adrian doesn't love anyone, Vanessa. Least of all you. You were an accessory, just like that diamond bracelet he bought you with embezzled money.”
She looked up, her mascara-stained eyes pleading. “Please, Clara. Tell Marcus Cross I cooperated. Tell them I’ll testify against Adrian. I’ll tell them everything—about the meetings in Miami, about the shell companies, about the conversations he had about your father’s medication! Just don’t let them send me to a federal prison for twenty years. Please!”
I leaned in, watching the desperate, pathetic creature who had once stood in a cathedral and mocked my suffering.
“You’ll testify, Vanessa,” I said coldly. “Not because I’m going to make a deal with you. But because the United States Attorney will offer you twelve years instead of thirty if you take the stand and repeat every single crime you watched him commit.”
She stared at me, trembling. “Twelve years? Clara, I’m thirty-one! I’ll be an old woman!”
“My father is sixty-eight,” I said, my voice cutting like broken glass. “And you were willing to let him die in agony so you could spend his money on Fifth Avenue. You should be grateful, Vanessa. You’ll be alive to see your release date. My father almost wasn't.”
I stood up, buttoned my coat, and knocked on the steel door for the guard.
“Goodbye, Vanessa.”
May you like
As the heavy door swung open, her screams of hysterical weeping echoed behind me, bouncing off the cinderblock walls of the corridor until the heavy steel slammed shut, cutting them off completely.
***
