Chapter 17 - The Cell Block Confession
Eleanor’s face drained of color until she looked like a marble bust carved for a tomb.
She opened her mouth to speak, but the words failed her.
For fifty years, she had weaponized legal technicalities, jurisdictional loopholes, and international trade treaties against everyone who crossed her path.
She had never imagined that the quiet, obedient daughter-in-law she treated like a domestic servant had spent her evenings in the Langston library studying those very same treaties.
"You have until midnight to call Julian Thorne," I said, picking up the tape recorder from the table.
"If the injunction against my clinic is not withdrawn by tomorrow morning, the digital copy of this tape will be in the inbox of every trade minister in Western Europe."
I turned on my heel and walked out of the library.
I did not wait for her answer.
I walked through the silent foyer, pushed past the heavy oak doors, and stepped back into the cold Manhattan rain.
My work in the city, however, was not finished.
There was still one loose thread that needed to be severed.
One final ghost that needed to be confronted before I could truly close the door on the Langston name.
The next morning, I took the regional train upstate to the Otisville Federal Correctional Institution.
The visiting room was sterile, brightly lit with buzzing fluorescent tubes, and smelled of industrial floor stripper and stale coffee.
I sat at a stainless steel table separated by a low plexiglass partition.
Five minutes later, a heavy metal door buzzed open.
Gareth was led into the room by an armed guard.
He wore a bright orange jumpsuit that hung loosely on his frame.
His hair, once styled by the most expensive barbers in Manhattan, was roughly shorn and streaked with gray at the temples.
His hollow cheeks were stubbled, and dark circles were bruised deeply under his hazel eyes.
He sat down across from me, his hands resting flat on the metal surface.
He looked at my face, and for a long moment, neither of us spoke.
"You actually came," Gareth said, his voice flat, stripped of the booming arrogance that had once defined him.
"I didn't come to visit my ex-husband," I answered evenly.
"I came to see my patient’s attempted murderer."
Gareth flinched slightly, but he didn't look away.
"My mother called me yesterday," Gareth said, leaning closer to the glass.
"She was terrified, Irene."
"In my entire thirty-six years on this earth, I have never heard Eleanor Langston sound terrified."
"She said you found the Miller patents."
"She said you threatened to destroy the family trust."
"I don't need to threaten anything, Gareth," I said.
"The destruction of your family was an inside job."
"You poisoned Bernard."
"Your mother poisoned my father."
"You simply inherited her methodology."
Gareth lowered his head, staring at the scarred stainless steel table.
"I didn't know about Arthur Miller," he whispered.
"I swear to God, Irene, I didn't know."
"When mother told me to pursue you, she said it was good for the firm’s public image."
"A rising young executive marrying a brilliant, quiet medical resident."
"It looked stable."
"It looked wholesome."
"She told me that your father had been an old friend of Bernard's who passed away before his time."
"I didn't find out the truth until three weeks before our wedding."
I leaned forward, my eyes locking onto his.
"And when you found out," I asked, "why didn't you stop it?"
"Why didn't you tell me?"
Gareth looked up, a terrible, desperate sadness filling his eyes.
"Because by then, I was already terrified of her," he choked out.
"And because by then, Irene... I actually loved you."
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"And I knew that if you found out what my family had done to your father, you would look at me the exact way you are looking at me right now."
"With nothing but disgust."
