Chapter 13 - The Ghost in the Penitentiary
The Terre Haute federal penitentiary smelled of industrial bleach, damp concrete, and unwashed despair.
I walked into the visitation booth wearing a tailored ivory trench coat, my polished heels clicking deliberately against the linoleum.
Behind the thick pane of scratched reinforced glass, Julian Sterling was led in by two armed corrections officers.
His once-flawless hair was shaved down to stubble, revealing scars on his scalp from prison brawls, and his expensive teeth were dull and chipped.
The eighteen-year sentence had already aged him twenty years; the bespoke Italian suits had been replaced by faded orange jumpsuits with his inmate number stenciled on the back.
When he saw me sitting across from him, his hollow eyes flared with a toxic mixture of hatred and absolute desperation.
He slammed down onto the steel stool and picked up the heavy plastic receiver with hands that trembled uncontrollably.
I lifted my phone, leaning back slightly, projecting the icy dominance of the woman who had crushed his entire existence.
"You came to gloat, didn't you, Clara?" Julian spat into the receiver, his voice hoarse and broken.
"You came to see the man who owned you sitting in a cage like an animal!"
"You never owned me, Julian," I said smoothly, my tone devoid of emotion.
"You were an expensive parasite that I finally had surgically removed."
"I didn't come here to look at you; I came because Marcus Vance reached out to me this morning."
At the mention of Marcus’s name, Julian’s face turned an ashen shade of gray, and the feral bravado vanished from his eyes.
His fingers clenched the phone cord until his knuckles turned bone-white.
"Don't speak that name," Julian whispered, casting a frantic glance at the guards standing behind him.
"He has ears in this facility, Clara; he can have me killed before the lights go out tonight."
"Then you had better talk fast," I told him, leaning closer to the glass.
"You told Victoria you were playing me for sixty-five million dollars, but that was pennies compared to the bond Marcus engineered."
"Tell me what you gave him, or I will ensure your restitution hearing is reopened and every cent of your protective custody allowance is revoked."
Julian let out a ragged, hysterical laugh that turned into a coughing fit.
"You think I was in on it?" Julian asked, tears of terror leaking down his gaunt cheeks.
"Victoria played me just like she played you!"
"She told me we were securing our future, that Marcus was just a foreign investor helping us launder the board shares!"
"She made me sign documents during our trips to Zurich—documents I never even read because I was drunk on her and the money!"
"What did the documents say, Julian?" I commanded.
"They weren't business transfers, Clara," Julian choked out, leaning his forehead against the glass.
"They were custody agreements and sovereign loan warrants."
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"Marcus didn't just target the company; he bought up your mother's ancestral estate in Scotland, the land where your father hid his original journals."
"Victoria was never my mistress, Clara; she was Marcus’s illegitimate daughter."
