Chapter 10 - The Confession Behind the Glass
The King County Correctional Facility smelled of floor stripper, industrial soup, and institutional despair.
Forty-eight hours after the wedding at Saint Jude's, the autumn rain was still pounding relentlessly against the high, wire-reinforced slit windows.
I sat on a hard stainless-steel stool behind a partition of four-inch-thick bulletproof polycarbonate glass in the non-contact visitation room.
On the other side of the glass sat Victoria Sterling, stripped of her three-hundred-thousand-dollar wedding gown and couture diamond earrings.
She wore a bright orange county jumpsuit that hung loosely off her thin shoulders, her bleached hair pulled back into a messy, unwashed ponytail.
Her face was pale, devoid of the expensive foundation and contouring that had created the illusion of youthful aristocratic elegance.
Without her disguise, she looked like what she truly was: a tired, middle-aged con artist who had run out of identities to hide behind.
She picked up the heavy black plastic telephone receiver with cuffed wrists, leaning her elbows on the stainless counter.
I lifted my receiver, pressing it against my ear, staring directly into the cold hazel eyes that had deceived my father for two straight years.
"Did you come here to gloat, little girl?" Victoria asked, her voice crackling through the cheap analog line with flat, venomous disdain.
"Did you come to see the wicked stepmother behind bars before the state takes away your precious father's company?"
"The company isn't going anywhere, Victoria," I answered, my voice steady, level, and entirely devoid of fear.
"The board voted this morning to approve my legal conservatorship under Richard Caldwell's operational management."
"Julian’s assets have been completely frozen by federal magistrates, and your offshore accounts in Belize were seized at dawn."
Victoria let out a short, mocking laugh, though her eyes narrowed slightly as the reality of her financial ruin settled into her skull.
"You think you’re a hero, Lucy?" she whispered, leaning closer to the perforated glass partition.
"You think you saved your daddy from the big bad wolf?"
"Do you want to know what your mother said to me on the night she finally stopped breathing?"
My hand tightened on the plastic receiver, but I did not look away, refusing to give her the satisfaction of seeing me flinch.
"Tell me," I said, cold as stone.
"She looked at me through that oxygen mask, her eyes completely clear for the first time in six months," Victoria sneered, her lips curling into a cruel smile.
"She pulled my sleeve and whispered, 'Take care of my daughter, because Ethan is too weak to protect her from this world.'"
"She knew your father was an empty suit who hid behind money and sentimental tears whenever things got difficult."
"She knew he would leave you to raise yourself while he drowned in his self-pity."
"And she was right, wasn't she?"
"You had to do his job for him on Sunday."
"You had to be the man of the house and kick the church doors open because Ethan was ready to hand me his entire empire on a silver platter."
I looked at the woman behind the glass, feeling no rage, no terror, and no hatred; only a deep, profound sense of absolute emptiness.
"My father is weak because he loved someone enough to let it break him, Victoria," I said, speaking slowly into the mouthpiece.
"You think that's a defect because you've never loved a single thing in your entire miserable, fraudulent life."
"You look at people and you only see balance sheets, leverage points, and vulnerabilities to exploit."
"You spent twenty years stealing dying people's jewelry and manipulating broken families for scraps of stolen money."
"And now you are going to spend the next twenty-five years in a six-by-eight concrete cell at the Washington Corrections Center for Women."
"The state attorney filed twenty-two counts of first-degree financial exploitation, identity theft, and grand larceny this morning."
"And Detective Miller is submitting the second-degree murder indictment for Olivia Hart's poisoning to the grand jury on Friday."
The smug, mocking grin on Victoria’s pale face finally vanished, replaced by an ugly, hollow mask of raw, visceral terror.
"They can't charge murder," Victoria stammered, her voice suddenly trembling as she gripped the phone with white knuckles.
"The medical records were sealed! The statute of limitations on wrongful death—"
"There is no statute of limitations on murder in the State of Washington, Victoria," I interrupted, leaning forward until my breath fogged the glass.
"And Julian just signed a full cooperation proffer with the Department of Justice."
"He traded you to save himself from life without parole."
"He gave them the recorded phone calls from 2016 where you discussed the exact dosage of phenobarbital needed to induce respiratory failure."
Victoria dropped the plastic receiver onto the stainless steel counter with a heavy, hollow clatter that echoed through the booth.
She stood up abruptly, backing away from the glass partition, her cuffed hands shaking violently as she stared at me like I was an executioner.
May you like
A corrections officer stepped through the rear heavy door, grabbed her by the arm, and shoved her toward the processing corridor.
I hung up the black telephone receiver, stood up from the stainless stool, and walked out of the prison into the cold autumn daylight.
