Chapter 23 - The Broken Puppet
The visitation room in the federal detention facility smelled of industrial bleach and institutional despair. Thick polycarbonate glass divided the room down the center, scratched by decades of desperate hands.
When the heavy steel door on the inmate side clicked open, Beatrice Vance stumbled into the cubicle, flanked by two armed federal corrections officers. The transformation was staggering. The polished, filter-perfect, designer-clad woman who had laughed into her smartphone camera while swinging an iron crowbar at Veta’s bed was gone. In her place sat a hollowed-out wreck in an oversized orange smock, her blonde extensions matted, her mascara scrubbed raw from red, swollen eyes.
When Beatrice saw Sloan sitting on the other side of the glass, she let out a strangled sob and lunged forward, pressing both palms against the partition.
"Sloan! Sloan, you have to tell them!" Beatrice cried through the perforated steel speaker grid, her voice cracking in hysterical desperation. "You have to tell the judge it was a misunderstanding! The internet took it out of context! We were doing a prank—a dramatic skit about medical neglect! I didn’t know the power cable was real! You know how my followers love drama, Sloan! Tell them to drop the federal charges!"
Sloan didn't move an inch. She sat perfectly erect, her hands folded over a slim black leather portfolio on the small counter. Her expression was as motionless as carved granite.
"Sit down, Beatrice," Sloan said. Her voice was not loud, but it carried a terrifying, icy authority that made the older woman shrink back into the bolted metal stool.
Beatrice swallowed hard, her chest heaving under the coarse orange cloth. "Sloan... please. They put me in solitary. The guards won't even give me my anxiety medication. My lawyer said the federal indictment carries twenty years without parole. Twenty years! For a piece of plastic and metal! I’ll die in here!"
"A piece of plastic and metal," Sloan repeated softly, her dark eyes locking onto Beatrice's dilated pupils. "You stood in my daughter’s room while she was gasping for air. You ripped the auxiliary lines from her chest. You laughed into a screen and told your three million followers that she was faking her asphyxiation for sympathy donations. And while you were doing that, Beatrice, an offshore routing code deposited three million dollars into your Cayman account."
Beatrice’s face drained of what little color remained. The frantic, weeping mask froze, shattered by sheer, unadulterated terror. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out.
"Y-you... you don't know what you're talking about," Beatrice stammered, her fingers beginning to twitch violently against her knees. "That was... that was an investment dividend from my ex-husband’s estate..."
"Arthur Sterling bought you," Sloan interrupted, leaning forward until her face was inches from the glass. "He bought your vanity. He bought your cruelty. He knew you were drowning in credit card debt, that your cosmetic surgery clinics were being foreclosed on, and that your social media empire was losing money every single month. He handed you three million dollars, a script, and a time to attack my home, because he needed my father’s patent."
"I didn't know!" Beatrice suddenly screamed, grabbing the metal edge of the counter, tears running down her hollow cheeks. "He said nobody would get hurt! He told me Veta had a backup unit in the closet! He said the hospital would take her for forty-eight hours, the machine would be condemned as dangerous, and I would get the cash and the rights to launch a clean medical lifestyle brand! He swore to me the machine was replaceable!"
"You tried to murder my child for a lifestyle brand," Sloan said, her voice dropping into a chilling, absolute stillness.
"He threatened me, Sloan!" Beatrice wept, her forehead banging against the scratched plastic partition. "Last night—the lights in my cell went off for ten minutes! Someone slipped a note under my door! They told me if I mentioned Sterling's name to the prosecutor, my son would be found floating in the harbor! They are monsters, Sloan! They aren't lawyers—they have hitmen! They control the judges, the hospitals, everything!"
Sloan opened the black leather portfolio. She slid a single document against the glass, turning it so Beatrice could read the legal header.
"This is an emergency revocation of the Vance Family Defense Trust," Sloan said. "Your high-priced defense attorney, Marcus Kane? His retainer was paid from this fund. In thirty seconds, when I sign this addendum, his firm will withdraw from your representation. You will be assigned a tired, overworked public defender with forty-eight cases on his desk."
"No... no, Sloan, please! Don't abandon me! Kane said he could get me into a psychiatric facility!" Beatrice shrieked, clawing at the glass.
"There is only one path where you survive this, Beatrice," Sloan said, uncapping a silver fountain pen. "You sign a full, unredacted federal proffer agreement. You turn over the private encryption keys to the Cayman account. You hand over every text message, every encrypted voice memo, and the physical drop-location where Sterling’s courier handed you the burner phone with the attack coordinates."
Beatrice stared at the paper, her breath coming in ragged, terrified gasps. "If I testify against Sterling... he’ll kill me."
"If you don't testify against Sterling," Sloan replied, her eyes burning with an ancient, unforgiving fury, "I will make sure the federal prosecutor seeks the death penalty for targeted biological murder of a disabled minor. Sterling might be a shadow, Beatrice. But I am the mother of the girl you tried to suffocate. Choose your monster."
Beatrice collapsed forward against the metal counter, her shoulders shaking with uncontrollable, hysterical sobs. She reached for the legal clipboard pushed through the document slot by the guard, her trembling hand taking the pen.
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"I’ll tell you everything," Beatrice choked out. "I’ll tell you everything he did."
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