Chapter 6 - Blood in the Water
The visitor’s room at the Metropolitan Correctional Center did not smell of gardenias. It smelled of industrial pine disinfectant, damp wool, and the sour, pervasive stench of institutional defeat.
Adrian Vance sat behind the scratched plexiglass partition, his hands cuffed to an iron ring anchored directly into the stainless steel counter.
He was wearing an orange institutional jumpsuit made of stiff, scratchy polyester that had been washed ten thousand times. His face was unrecognizable. His nose was crooked, set poorly by the intake physician at Rikers before his transfer, and his left eye was swollen shut from an altercation in the holding pen over an extra carton of skim milk.
The heavy steel door on the visitor’s side clicked open, and Dr. Celeste Voss was escorted in by an armed corrections officer.
She was not in an orange jumpsuit—yet. She had been released on a two-million-dollar secured bond funded by a hard-money lender who had taken a secondary lien on her parents’ home in Scottsdale. But she looked no better than him. She wore no makeup, her hair was pulled back in a cheap plastic clip, and her hands were raw, red, and shaking.
She sat down on the metal stool opposite him and picked up the heavy black plastic receiver.
Adrian picked up his phone. His breath fogged the glass.
"Did you find it?" Adrian’s voice through the receiver was a frantic, cracked wheeze. "The safety deposit box at the Republic Bank on 47th? The bearer bonds? Celeste, please tell me you got them before Sterling’s people froze the account."
Celeste stared at him through the scratched plastic. For twenty seconds, she didn't say a single word.
"Celeste!" Adrian slammed his cuffed hands against the steel counter, the chain rattling violently. "Talk to me! The lawyer says if I can't raise two hundred and fifty thousand for the forensic accounting defense team by Friday, the federal public defender is taking over my case! I can't survive in here with a state-appointed lawyer! These people are animals!"
"There are no bearer bonds, Adrian," Celeste said. Her voice was dead, flat, hollowed out of every human emotion.
Adrian blinked, his single open eye widening in horror. "What do you mean? I bought them with the Lumina dividends! Two million dollars in Swiss paper!"
"The safety deposit box was registered under Lumina Med-Tech," Celeste said. "Lumina Med-Tech was wholly owned by Voss Aesthetics. And Voss Aesthetics was placed into corporate receivership under Aegis Capital forty-eight hours ago."
She leaned closer to the glass, her breath leaving a greasy smudge on the surface.
"Mara took them," Celeste whispered. "She was there with the federal marshals when they drilled the lock yesterday afternoon. She took the bonds. She took the ledger. She took the title to the Miami penthouse you told me you bought for our honeymoon."
Adrian’s head dropped. He pressed his forehead against the cold stainless steel, a low, animal wail escaping his throat.
"My father," he wept. "My father won't answer my calls. He changed the gate codes at the Locust Valley house. The guards threatened to shoot me if I walked up the driveway."
"Your father is bankrupt, Adrian," Celeste said, and for the first time, a small, terrifying flicker of a smile appeared at the corners of her cracked lips. "Didn't your lawyer tell you?"
Adrian jerked his head up. "What did you say?"
"Arthur Vance signed personal cross-guarantees for your share of the clinic expansion," Celeste explained, her voice dropping into a sing-song cadence of complete madness. "He thought he was backing a premier medical empire. He thought he was buying his way into high-society healthcare. When Mara called the Aegis note, the cross-default triggered every loan Arthur had with Citibank and Morgan Stanley. They called his mortgages this morning. The Locust Valley house is going to public auction in thirty days."
Adrian stared at her, the reality of the words washing over him like acid.
"No," he muttered. "No, no, no... my father... the Vance name..."
"The Vance name is garbage," Celeste spat, her face suddenly contorting with that vicious, aristocratic rage that had once terrified her clinic staff. "You destroyed me! You came into my office with your bespoke suits and your rented Mercedes, talking about venture debt and private equity expansion! I was a respected surgeon! I was on the cover of magazines!"
"You were a crook!" Adrian screamed into the phone, rising from the stool until the chain anchored to the counter jerked him violently back down. "You were buying fake Botox from the Russian mob in Brighton Beach before you ever met me! You used my shell companies to launder the invoices! Don't you dare sit there and act like a martyr, you surgical butcher!"
"Inmate Vance! Step back!" The corrections officer in the corner stepped forward, his hand unholstering his heavy wooden baton.
Celeste didn't flinch. She leaned in even closer to the partition, her eyes fixed on the man she had sworn to love until death.
"I took a plea deal twenty minutes ago, Adrian," she said.
Adrian went completely rigid. "What?"
"The United States Attorney offered me four years at the federal camp in Danbury in exchange for full, unreserved cooperation in the wire fraud and customs conspiracy indictments," Celeste said, her voice dropping to a whisper that sounded like dead leaves. "I signed the proffer. I gave them your emails. I gave them the encrypted WhatsApp logs where you instructed me how to alter the serial numbers on the silicone implants. I gave them everything."
"You... you betrayed me," Adrian stammered, tears streaming down his bruised, swollen cheeks.
"I didn't betray you, Adrian," Celeste said, hanging up the black plastic receiver and standing up from the metal stool. "I upgraded."
May you like
She turned her back on him and walked toward the exit door, leaving him screaming and thrashing against his chains, his cries swallowed entirely by the concrete walls of the holding facility.
***
