Chapter 4 - The Shadow of Victoria
Three weeks later.
The high-security visitor wing of the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility was cold, smelling of industrial floor wax and stale disinfectant.
I sat on one side of the thick glass partition. Across from me sat Victoria Sterling.
Her designer dress was gone, replaced by a dark orange prison jumpsuit. Her manicured nails were bitten down to the quick, her hair flat and unwashed, dark purple circles haunting her eyes. Her trial was scheduled for next month, and with the federal evidence stacked against her, her legal team was estimating a minimum twelve-year sentence without parole.
She picked up the plastic telephone receiver with shaking, thin hands. I picked up mine.
"Did you come here to mock me, Nathan?" Victoria rasped, her voice bitter and cracked through the small speaker. "Did you come to show me photos of your happy little family?"
"No," I said quietly. "I came to bring you your personal items from the estate. And to tell you that the civil lawsuit has been settled."
Victoria let out a harsh, dry laugh. "Settled? You took everything! My father’s firm is liquidated! My family house in the Hamptons is being auctioned by the federal marshals next week! I don't even have enough money left in my commissary account to buy decent soap!"
"You tried to beat a four-year-old child with a wooden weapon, Victoria," I reminded her, my voice cold and unyielding. "You showed no mercy to Grace when she was starving in a two-room apartment in Pennsylvania trying to buy milk for my daughter. You deserve every day you spend behind these walls."
Victoria gripped the plastic receiver so tightly her knuckles turned white, her eyes burning with a desperate, pathetic fury.
"I loved you!" she screamed through the glass, her voice echoing off the concrete walls of the visitor room. "I was supposed to be your wife! We were supposed to rule this city together! You traded me for a servant girl!"
"She was never a servant girl, Victoria," I said, standing up from my chair, looking down at her through the reinforced glass. "She was the bravest woman I’ve ever met. She protected my daughter when I wasn't there to do it. And unlike you... she loved me when I had nothing to offer her but my name."
I set the telephone receiver back on its hook.
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Victoria slammed her fists against the partition, screaming my name as the prison guards stepped forward, grabbed her arms, and dragged her back through the heavy steel doors toward the cell block.
I didn't turn around to watch her go. I walked out through the heavy iron gates of the prison into the crisp, clean autumn air.
