Chapter 6 - The Visitor in the Steel Cage
Six months after the trial, I received an official letter from the Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland.
Caleb had submitted four separate requests for a visitation meeting. His legal team had reached out to my attorneys, claiming that my brother was suffering from severe depression and wished to discuss a family reconciliation before his formal sentencing hearing.
I sat in my office at Bennett Meridian Systems for a long time, looking at the prison visitation form on my mahogany desk.
Sarah Miller stepped into the office, carrying a stack of drone testing reports. She saw the letter in my hand and her brow furrowed.
“You don't have to go, Mara,” Sarah said softly, setting the files down. “He tried to send you to a federal prison for twenty years. He doesn't deserve ten minutes of your time.”
“I know,” I said, looking out the floor-to-ceiling glass window at the sunlit city. “But if I don't go, he’ll spend the next twenty years believing he’s a victim of circumstance. He needs to see who I am now.”
Two days later, I walked through the heavy security checkpoints of the maximum-security federal facility. The metallic clanging of iron doors and the echo of guards' boots echoed down the sterile gray hallways.
I was shown into a small, glass-divided visitation room.
A minute later, the door on the opposite side opened, and two armed guards escorted Caleb into the room.
I barely recognized him.
The handsome, arrogant young man who used to wear three-thousand-dollar suits and sneer at me across dinner tables was gone. Caleb wore an oversized orange jumpsuit. His hair was shaved short, his face was pale and hollow, and his hands were cuffed to a heavy chain around his waist.
He sat down on the metal stool, looking at me through the thick bulletproof glass.
He picked up the phone. I slowly lifted mine.
“Mara...” Caleb’s voice was hoarse, quivering with desperation. “Thank God you came. Please... you have to talk to the federal prosecutor. They’re talking about fifteen years, Mara! Fifteen years in a maximum-security facility!”
I listened quietly, my expression completely unreadable. “You committed corporate espionage and sold defense schematics to a foreign syndicate, Caleb. Fifteen years is a light sentence.”
“I was manipulated!” Caleb cried out, pressing his hands against the glass. “It was Mom! She’s the one who wanted the money! She’s the one who forged Dad’s signature on the secondary will! She told me you were dead to us anyway!”
I let out a slow, quiet breath. “You were thirty years old, Caleb. You weren't a child being led astray. You made a choice every time you signed those shell company wire transfers.”
“I’m your brother!” Caleb sobbed, tears spilling down his pale cheeks. “We grew up in the same house! Dad loved you more, Mara! He always looked at you like you were special, and he looked at me like I was a disappointment!”
“Dad loved you, Caleb,” I corrected him gently, my voice firm and steady. “He offered you a vice presidency at the company three times. You turned it down because you didn't want to start at the bottom and work your way up. You wanted everything handed to you on a silver platter.”
Caleb stared at me, his jaw quivering, unable to find a single word to defend himself.
“I didn't come here to insult you, Caleb,” I said, looking him straight in the eye. “I came here to tell you that I won't be coming back. The legal team will handle your sentencing. The family trust has been dissolved, and your legal fees will come out of your remaining personal inheritance.”
“Mara... please don't leave me here alone...” Caleb pleaded, his voice cracking like a terrified child’s.
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“You’re not alone, Caleb,” I said softly, standing up from my stool. “You have the consequences of your own choices to keep you company.”
I hung up the phone, turned my back on his frantic banging against the glass, and walked out into the bright afternoon sunlight, leaving the ghosts of my family’s greed behind forever.