Chapter 9 - The Plea from the Cell
Two weeks later, the dust had begun to settle, though the legal machinery of retribution ground forward with terrifying efficiency.
Vanessa Reed had taken a plea deal. Faced with fifteen years in state prison for wire fraud and embezzlement, she had turned state’s evidence against Ethan, providing prosecutors with two years’ worth of encrypted text messages, emails, and hotel receipts. She was currently serving a three-year sentence at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, her designer lifestyle completely obliterated.
Ethan was not so lucky.
Because he had signed the fraudulent SEC filings and personally authorized the shell corporation transfers, he was facing twelve felony counts. His bail had been set at five million dollars—money he simply did not have. Every single one of his personal accounts was frozen, his luxury cars were repossessed by the leasing company, and the Park Avenue penthouse was officially seized under the prenuptial agreement’s forfeiture clauses.
On a rainy Thursday afternoon, I arrived at the Rikers Island visitor facility.
I didn't come because I missed him. I came to deliver the final document.
When Ethan was brought into the small, sterile glass booth, I could barely recognize him.
The polished, manicured tech billionaire was gone. In his place sat a hollow, broken man wearing an oversized beige prison jumpsuit. His hair was greasy and unwashed, his face covered in patchy stubble, and his hazel eyes were sunken into dark, purple hollows of terror and exhaustion.
He sat down, picking up the heavy plastic telephone receiver with hands that trembled constantly.
I picked up my receiver.
"Claire," he choked out, pressing his face against the scratched, smudged plexiglass. "Claire, thank God. Thank God you came. You have to get me out of here. Please. It’s a nightmare. The guards... the other inmates... they know who I am. They extort me for phone cards. I can’t sleep. I’m going to lose my mind."
"Sign the papers, Ethan," I said through the receiver.
I slid a blue legal folder across the small stainless-steel slot beneath the glass.
Ethan looked down at it. "Divorce papers?"
"Uncontested divorce," I said. "You waive all claims to any Vance Meridian equity, past, present, or future. You surrender the deed to the Hamptons estate, which was purchased with company funds. In exchange, my legal team will recommend to the District Attorney that they drop the secondary conspiracy charges, which will reduce your mandatory minimum sentence from twenty years to seven."
"Seven years?!" Ethan cried out, tears spilling down his pale cheeks. "Claire, I can’t survive seven years in prison! I’ll be forty-two when I get out! I’ll have nothing! No money, no career, no reputation! Everyone on Wall Street laughs at me! The media calls me the Milli Vanilli of Silicon Valley!"
"You should have thought about that before you stole from me," I said, my voice completely devoid of emotion. "You should have thought about that before you stood in front of three hundred people and yelled at me for being burned by your mistress."
Ethan flinched as if I had struck him. He looked down at the table, his shoulders heaving with pathetic, silent sobs.
"I loved you, Claire," he whispered. "At the beginning... before the money... I really loved you."
"No, Ethan," I said gently, speaking the absolute truth. "You loved what I could do for you. You loved the reflected glow of my intellect, which you wore like a stolen coat. The moment you believed you had absorbed enough of my brilliance to stand on your own, you discarded me."
I tapped the glass with my manicured fingernail.
"Sign the papers. Or I withdraw the plea recommendation, and Marcus Hale’s legal team will ensure you serve every single day of the twenty-year maximum."
Ethan stared at me. He looked into my eyes, searching for a trace of the meek, accommodating woman who had spent five years cooking his dinners, organizing his galas, and rewriting his broken code in the middle of the night.
He found nothing.
With a trembling hand, Ethan took the cheap plastic ballpoint pen provided by the guard, opened the folder, and signed his name on the dotted line.
He slid the folder back through the slot.
"Will you... will you ever visit me again?" he asked, his voice sounding like that of a terrified child.
I took the folder, stood up, and smoothed my coat.
"No, Ethan," I said. "This is the last time you will ever see my face."
May you like
I hung up the receiver, turned my back, and walked through the heavy steel doors without looking back.
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