MY HUSBAND WHIPPED ME 20 TIMES OVER HIS SILVER-TONGUED MISTRESS. I IMMEDIATELY CALLED MY BILLIONAIRE FATHER: 'DAD, JUST LIKE YOU TOLD ME, DESTROY HIS LIFE.' 5 MINUTES LATER, HE WAS COMPLETELY COLLAPSED...

I took the envelope and sat down in my leather armchair.

For a moment, I considered throwing it straight into the paper shredder beside my desk. Adrian was a ghost from a past life—a man who no longer had any power or relevance in my world.

But curiosity beat out apathy. I slid a silver letter opener through the top flap and pulled out a single sheet of rough, yellow lined paper written in blue ballpoint ink.

Claire,

I don't expect you to reply to this letter. I know my letters are monitored by the prison wardens anyway.

I’m writing this from the laundry facility at Allenwood Federal Penitentiary. I wake up at 4:30 AM every morning to fold sheets for sixteen cents an hour. My back hurts constantly. My hands are rough and blistered. Every night, when the cell block lights go out at 9:00 PM, I sit on my steel bunk and look at the tiny square window in my cell.

Yesterday, I saw a copy of Forbes magazine in the prison library. You were on the cover. "Claire Ellison: The $100 Billion Queen of Tech." You looked breathtaking, Claire. Regal, powerful, and completely untouchable.

I realized something while looking at that picture. I thought I was the king when we were married. I thought I was the genius, the visionary, the provider. But the truth is, I was just a small, arrogant boy standing in the shadow of a giant.

Vanessa Vale was transferred to a medium-security facility in West Virginia last month after getting into a fight in the cafeteria. She lost two teeth and three years of good-behavior credits. She tried to send me a letter blaming you for everything. I burned it.

I don't blame you anymore, Claire. You didn't destroy my life. My own vanity did. You just showed me who I really was when the lights went out.

I have twenty-one years left on my sentence. I will die in this place. My mother lives in a small rented apartment in Ohio, working as a receptionist at sixty-eight years old. My family name is gone.

If there is an afterlife, I hope I am reborn as a better man so I can deserve a woman like you.

Goodbye, Claire.

— Adrian

I read the letter twice.

Then I folded the yellow paper back up, placed it back inside the manila envelope, and dropped it into the roaring flame of the decorative gas fireplace in my office.

I watched the paper curl into black ash, consumed completely until nothing remained.