Chapter 8 - The Cornered Wolf
Two months later, the private visiting room of the Metropolitan Correctional Center was quiet, save for the low hum of an air vent.
I sat on one side of the polished steel table. I had agreed to visit him once—and only once. Not out of mercy, but because Eleanor had finalized the absolute, unconditional dissolution of our marriage, and the state required one final execution of property severance.
When the door opened, Arthur shuffled in.
The change in him was terrifyingly complete. In sixty days, he had lost nearly thirty pounds. His orange jumpsuit hung loosely from his narrow frame. His once-thick, styled hair had been roughly buzzed down to the scalp by prison barbers, revealing the sharp, bony contours of his skull. The golden tan that had defined his arrival from Saint Lucia was completely gone, replaced by the pasty, gray pallor of a man who hadn't seen natural sunlight in eight weeks.
He sat down across from me, the steel chains around his ankles clinking heavily against the floor.
He looked at my face, then down at my hands. I was no longer wearing my wedding ring. In its place, I wore my father’s simple gold signet ring.
“Claire,” he rasped. His voice sounded like dry leaves scraping over asphalt.
“The divorce is finalized, Arthur,” I said, placing the blue-backed legal decree onto the table between us. “The judge signed the final decree this morning. The prenuptial agreement was upheld in its entirety under the fraud and abandonment exceptions. You have no legal claim to the estate, the art, the real estate, or the name.”
Arthur didn't reach for the paper. He just stared at me with wide, hollow eyes that seemed to burn with a mixture of despair and lingering madness.
“Do you know what they do to men like me in here?” he whispered, his lip trembling. “When they find out what I did? When they find out that a three-year-old child died while I was on an island?”
“I imagine they have very little respect for you,” I answered evenly.
“They spit in my food, Claire,” he whispered, leaning across the table, tears leaking from his hollow eyes. “They wake me up at night by kicking my metal bunk. The guards... the guards look the other way. I am living in hell.”
“My daughter spent forty hours in hell,” I said, my voice dropping into that terrifying, steady quiet. “She couldn't breathe. Her brain was swelling against her skull. And every time the door opened, she looked for the man who was supposed to protect her from the dark.”
Arthur squeezed his eyes shut, a jagged sob catching in his throat.
“I didn't mean to kill her, Claire,” he choked out. “You have to believe me. In your heart, you have to know I loved her. I was weak. I was vain. I wanted to feel powerful... I wanted to be the man your father was!”
“You could never be the man my father was,” I said, standing up. “My father built hospitals. You dismantled them to buy diamond bracelets for a girl who gave your private passwords to the FBI within twenty minutes of being asked.”
Arthur looked up at me, his face collapsing into pure, unadulterated grief. “What happens to me now?”
“Your trial begins in four months,” I said. “The federal prosecutors have compiled ninety-six thousand pages of evidence. Marcus Vance will be their lead witness. Beatrice Montgomery will be their second. The minimum sentence for your charges, Arthur, is twenty-four years without parole.”
He gasped, the number hitting him like a physical blow. “Twenty-four years? I’ll be sixty years old!”
“You’ll be sixty years old when you take your first walk outside as a free man,” I said, turning toward the heavy exit door. “Chloe never got to see her fourth birthday.”
“Claire! Don’t leave me!” he screamed, straining against the chains that bound his waist to the floor, the metal groaning under his weight. “Claire, please! Just tell me you don't hate me! Just tell me one day you’ll forgive me!”
I paused at the door, knocking once for the guard to unlock the deadbolt.
I looked back over my shoulder at the ruined, chained ghost of the man I had once loved.
“I don't hate you, Arthur,” I told him softly. “Hate requires feeling something. And when I look at you, I feel absolutely nothing at all.”
May you like
The heavy steel door swung open, and I walked out into the bright, clean corridors of the courthouse, leaving his screams behind the reinforced concrete.
***
