Chapter 88 - The Broken Circle
Three hundred miles south, within the visiting annex of the Western State Correctional Facility, Melissa sat across from a man in an expensive charcoal wool coat.
Her fingernails, once meticulously manicured on Jared’s dime, were bitten down to the quick. Her blonde hair was pulled back in an unwashed knot, and the prison denim hung loose on her frame. The arrogance that had carried her through Christmas dinner—the shrill, mocking laughter as she dumped kibble into a bowl and told Ellie she was lucky to have a meal—was gone, replaced by the frantic, rabid twitch of a trapped animal.
"I told you," Melissa hissed, leaning as close to the glass partition as the guard would permit. "The deed was just the surface! My grandfather kept a private ledger in the floor safe beneath the tire balancer. He spent millions! Where did an old mechanic get millions, huh? He didn't have contracts with Ford or GM. He had contracts with the Department of Energy and private defense firms back in the seventies!"
The man in the charcoal coat, whose credentials identified him as an attorney named Vance, did not blink. His eyes were cold, calculating, the eyes of an asset recovery manager for a private equity firm that bought failed governments and forgotten black sites.
"Your brother controls the property," Vance said, his voice flat through the intercom handset. "Your boyfriend failed to secure the primary safe. He is currently serving six years for armed burglary, and he talked to the county prosecutor within twelve minutes of his arrest."
"Brett is an idiot!" Melissa spat, saliva flecking the glass. "He was just supposed to get the papers! Listen to me, Vance. My mother has the original diary entries Arthur wrote before he died. The ones he hid from the estate inventory. There is an installation under Spur Seven. He called it the 'Core Tap.' He said whoever held the key didn't just own the mountain—they owned the resonance grid for the entire northern corridor."
Vance slowly adjusted his cufflink. "And your brother Jared? Does he know what he is sitting on?"
"Jared is a grease monkey!" she snorted, her face twisting with bitter resentment. "He cares about his stupid kids, his broken-down tow trucks, and his little self-righteous moral code. He doesn't know anything! If you go in there with enough men, you take the ridge, blow the vault, and give me my cut. Forty percent. That was the deal."
Vance stood up. He did not smile. He did not look at her with sympathy or respect; he looked at her the way an engineer looks at a spent fuse.
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"Your brother dismantled an eight-man extraction team in the Upper Yard forty-eight hours ago, Melissa," Vance said coldly. "He did it using civilian machinery, two hunting rifles, and an industrial winch. He is not a grease monkey. He is Arthur’s grandson. And you are a pauper who traded an empire for four months of lease payments on an Audi."
Vance turned and walked down the corridor, leaving Melissa screaming against the soundproof glass, her fists pounding against the reinforced polycarbonate until the guards pinned her to the linoleum floor.
