Chapter 9 - The Prison Visit
The Charleston County Detention Center smelled of industrial bleach and defeat.
Daniel Whitmore sat behind the thick plexiglass partition, dressed in a faded orange jumpsuit that was two sizes too large for his frame. His stubble was thick, his hair was greasy, and a dark bruise bloomed beneath his left eye—a souvenir from a cellmate who hadn't appreciated Daniel’s whining during the night.
When the heavy steel door on the visitor's side opened, Daniel’s head jerked up with frantic anticipation.
"Chloe?!" he gasped.
Emily sat down on the metal stool across from him.
Daniel recoiled as if burned. Then, a wild, desperate rage took over his face. He grabbed the plastic telephone receiver on his side of the glass. Emily calmly picked up hers.
"You!" Daniel hissed into the receiver, his spit flecking the glass. "You think you won, don't you?! You think you can destroy my life and walk away?! My lawyers are going to tear your bogus charges to shreds! I will sue your father for every penny he has! You trapped me!"
Emily listened without changing her expression. When he finished his rant, chest heaving, she spoke in a measured, tranquil tone.
"Chloe isn't coming, Daniel."
Daniel froze. "What?"
"Chloe was detained by federal investigators yesterday afternoon," Emily said. "The Miami penthouse has been seized. Her accounts are frozen. The moment she realized you had no money left, she handed over your personal laptop and three encrypted flash drives to Julian Vance."
Daniel’s face drained of color. "She... she wouldn't do that..."
"She did," Emily said. "In exchange for immunity from grand theft charges, she signed an eight-page affidavit detailing every single dollar you embezzled from Whitmore Development over the last three years. She even gave us the text messages where you joked about leaving me with thirty million dollars in defaulted debt while you lived off the company’s corpse in Florida."
Daniel dropped the phone onto his lap. His hands began to shake uncontrollably.
"Emily..." he whispered into the receiver, picking it back up with trembling fingers. "Emily, please... baby... listen to me. I was sick! I had an addiction! The pressure of living up to your father's shadow... it broke me! You know that wasn't the real me! Remember our first year together? The little apartment in Charleston? The promises we made?"
"I remember," Emily said softly.
For a second, Daniel’s eyes flashed with hope.
"I remember how you told me I was the strongest woman you'd ever known," Emily continued. "And then I remember how yesterday you grabbed my hair, threw me to the floor, and told thirty people to watch while you humiliated me."
"I made a mistake!" Daniel sobbed, pressing his palms against the glass. "One mistake!"
"It wasn't a mistake, Daniel. It was your true nature," Emily said. "Kindness to you was an invitation to dominate. Love to you was an asset to exploit. You thought my father abandoned me. You thought I was helpless."
She leaned closer to the glass.
"Tomorrow morning, the formal grand jury indictment will be unsealed. Thirty-four felony counts. Julian Vance has personally ensured that there will be no plea deal. You are going to federal prison, Daniel. Not for six months. Not for a year. But for fifteen to twenty years."
Daniel broke down completely, burying his face in his orange-sleeved arms, weeping like a broken child against the cold partition.
"Why...?" Daniel muffled out. "Why didn't you just tell me who your father was from the start?!"
Emily stood up, hanging the telephone receiver back onto its metal hook.
She looked down at the pathetic man who had terrorized her for six long years.
"Because, Daniel," Emily spoke through the small speaker grille at the base of the glass, "I wanted a husband who loved me for who I was, not for what my father could give him. And in the end, you proved you were worth neither."
She turned and walked out of the visitation booth.
May you like
Behind her, the steel door slammed shut with a finality that sounded like the closing of a tomb.
***