Chapter 11 - The Prison Visit
The maximum-security visitation hall at Blackwood Penitentiary smelled of damp concrete, cheap disinfectant, and oxidized iron.
I sat on the hard metal stool on the visitor's side of the shatterproof glass partition.
I was wearing a tailored charcoal wool coat that concealed the light compression binder wrapping my healed incisions.
A single guard in a bulletproof vest stood two paces behind me, his radio murmuring static every few seconds.
The heavy steel door at the back of the inmate holding cubicle swung open with a harsh mechanical clank.
Julian Vance was escorted in by two correctional officers, his ankles chained with heavy steel shackles that scraped across the cement floor.
Clink. Clank. Clink.
He looked unrecognizable.
The manicured billionaire CEO who once spent thousands on custom Italian suits was now drowning in a stained, faded orange jumpsuit.
His thick hair had been shaved down to the scalp, revealing hollow temples and skin that looked gray under the flickering fluorescent tubes.
His cheeks were sunken, his lips cracked, and dark, purple shadows bruised the skin beneath his hollow eyes.
He sat down heavily on the welded stool, lifting his handcuffed wrists to pick up the plastic telephone receiver.
I reached out with my gloved right hand and lifted the receiver on my side of the glass.
For a long moment, neither of us spoke.
Julian stared at my face through the scratched, fingerprint-smudged glass as if looking at an apparition pulled from the depths of a river.
His lower lip trembled violently, and when he finally spoke, his voice was a thin, wheezing rasp.
“Nora…” he choked out, pressing his forehead lightly against the cold glass. “You came. You actually came.”
I looked at him with an expression as cold and flat as winter granite.
“I didn't come to comfort you, Julian,” I said, my voice steady through the wire. “I came to deliver a few final updates.”
Julian let out a broken, pathetic sob, tears immediately tracking down his hollow, unwashed cheeks.
“Nora, please, listen to me!” he begged, pressing his shackled hands against the barrier. “You have to speak to the prosecutor! Tell them it wasn't premeditated!”
“Selina poisoned my mind! She fed me lies for months! She told me you were poisoning my drinks, that you were sleeping with your personal trainer, that you were going to ruin me!”
“I was having a nervous breakdown, Nora! The pressure of the company, the sleep deprivation… I snapped! I didn't know what I was doing!”
I let him scream and ramble, watching his throat spasm with pathetic, desperate excuses.
When he finally ran out of breath, panting against the phone, I leaned closer to the grill.
“Do you remember what you asked me before you stabbed me, Julian?” I asked quietly.
Julian froze, his bloodshot eyes widening in terror.
“You asked me why I couldn't just leave Selina alone,” I continued, each word delivered with icy precision.
“You told me that if I ever touched her again, you would kill me.”
“And then you drove a fruit knife through my abdomen twice, stepped over my bleeding body, and wrapped your coat around her shoulders.”
“Nora, I was sick—”
“Shut up,” I cut him off, my voice dropping an octave into pure venom.
Julian’s mouth snapped shut instantly, silenced by a commanding aura he had never seen in me during our three years of marriage.
“Selina accepted a preliminary proffer yesterday morning,” I told him smoothly.
Julian blinked, his face twitching. “What?”
“She gave the district attorney three audio voice memos she secretly recorded on her phone during your late-night rendezvous at the marina.”
“In those recordings, you explicitly discussed how much easier it would be if I suffered a ‘fatal domestic intrusion.’”
“You offered her forty percent of my father's trust if she helped you establish an alibi.”
Julian’s breath caught in his throat, his eyes bulging as if an invisible noose had suddenly tightened around his neck.
“She… she recorded me?” he whispered, his soul completely collapsing in real time. “From the beginning?”
“From the very first week she came back to the city, Julian,” I replied with a faint, mocking smile.
“She never loved you. She thought you were a weak, gullible fool with deep pockets.”
“She played you like a cheap fiddle, used your vanity to orchestrate my murder, and intended to take your money and flee with her real lover to Panama.”
Julian let out a guttural, wounded shriek, slamming his cuffed hands against the glass partition.
“Her real lover?!” he screamed, tears flying from his eyes. “Who?! Who was she with?!”
“David Ross,” I answered calmly. “The private charter pilot you hired for your Gulfstream.”
Julian’s jaw dropped.
He collapsed forward against the counter, his chest heaving with dry, violent heaves as the sheer, humiliating magnitude of his deception crushed his spirit.
The pilot he had tipped thousands of dollars to fly them away had been sleeping with his mistress in the luxury hotels Julian paid for with company funds.
“There’s one more thing you need to know, Julian,” I said, leaning in so close my breath fogged the cold glass.
Julian slowly lifted his tear-streaked face, looking at me with glazed, dead eyes.
“Do you remember the velvet box on our bedroom dresser the morning you tried to butcher me?”
Julian swallowed hard, his voice trembling. “The… the jewelry box?”
“There were no diamonds inside that box, Julian.”
I slowly reached into my coat pocket and pulled out a laminated medical document, pressing it flat against the reinforced window.
Julian squinted through his tears, reading the black-and-white print:
PATIENT: NORA VANCE.
LABORATORY REPORT: HCG BLOOD SERUM POSITIVE — GESTATIONAL AGE: 5 WEEKS.
Julian’s hands began to shake so violently that the telephone receiver slipped from his grasp, dangling against the metal wall by its armored steel cord.
He scrambled frantically to grab the plastic receiver, pressing it against his ear with two hands, his voice shrieking in high-pitched agony.
“You were… you were pregnant?” Julian sobbed, his voice cracking into fragments. “My… my child?”
“Our child,” I said, feeling no pity for the monster weeping before me.
“The child you spent eighteen months begging me for.”
“The baby you promised would anchor our family forever.”
“You drove that knife directly into my uterine wall on your second strike, Julian.”
“Dr. Reed had to perform an emergency resection to save my life while your baby bled to death inside me.”
A terrible, animalistic scream ripped from Julian’s chest.
He threw himself against the glass, beating his forehead against the partition until the thick panel rattled.
“NO! OH GOD, NO! NO, NORA, PLEASE! PLEASE FORGIVE ME! KILL ME! JUST KILL ME RIGHT NOW!”
The two correctional guards immediately moved in, grabbing Julian by his arms and pinning him down against the concrete floor.
Julian kicked and thrashed, weeping hysterically, his face smeared with snot, tears, and spit as the guards forced his head into the dirt.
I slowly hung the black plastic receiver back on its metal hook.
May you like
I picked up my leather purse, adjusted the lapels of my wool coat, and turned my back on him.
Behind me, the sound of his agonizing wails echoed through the heavy steel chambers of Blackwood Penitentiary, fading into the distance as the thick vault doors locked shut forever.
