Chapter 8 - THE TRUTH IN THE FLAMES
With Richard Sterling and Viktor Kross behind bars, the federal government cleared Mercer Aerospace of all wrongdoing. The corporate espionage ring had been completely dismantled from the top down.
Two weeks after the chaos ended, I received a official request from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Vanessa Thorne was being transferred to a maximum-security federal facility in upstate New York to serve a twenty-five-year sentence without the possibility of parole. Before her transfer, she had requested one single, fifteen-minute visitor: me.
Agent Chen advised against it, but I needed to close the door on that chapter of my life forever.
The visitation room at the Metropolitan Correctional Center was cold, metallic, and quiet. I sat on one side of a thick plexiglass partition.
A moment later, a heavy steel door opened, and Vanessa was brought in by two armed guards.
She was dressed in a bright orange jumpsuit. Her immaculate blonde hair was tied back in a plain ponytail, her face free of makeup, looking pale and hollowed out. The illusion of the high-society art curator was completely gone.
She sat down across from me and picked up the red telephone receiver.
I picked up mine.
“You came,” she said, her voice thin and flat through the speaker.
“I came to look at you one last time, Vanessa,” I replied smoothly. “To make sure you realize that it’s over.”
Vanessa let out a hollow, bitter laugh. “You think you won, Elijah? Look at you. You’re still sitting in your big empty house, trust nobody, surrounded by guards and memory of your dead parents.”
“I’m surrounded by people who care about me,” I said. “Real people. People like Maria. People like my workers. Something you will never understand.”
Vanessa leaned closer to the glass, her dark eyes flashing with a sudden, desperate fury. “Do you know why I targeted you, Elijah? It wasn't just the money. It was your pathetic, soft heart. You were so desperate for a family, so eager to believe that someone loved you, that you made it easy for me.”
I looked at her, feeling no anger, no resentment—only a deep, profound pity.
“I was willing to give you everything, Vanessa,” I said softly. “My trust, my home, my name. But you preferred to live like a parasite. You thought my kindness was weakness. That was your fatal mistake.”
Vanessa bit her lower lip, unable to hold my gaze. For the first time, a flicker of genuine regret flashed across her face—not regret for what she had done, but regret for the life she could have had.
“Your trial starts next month,” I added, standing up from my chair. “You will spend the next quarter of a century in a nine-by-twelve cell. I hope it was worth it.”
May you like
“Elijah, wait—” she began, her hand pressing against the glass.
I hung up the phone, turned my back on her, and walked out of the visitation room into the bright sunlight of Manhattan.
