HE SLAPPED HIS WIFE TO DEFEND HIS MISTRESS AT A BILLION-DOLLAR GALA—UNTIL SHE WHISPERED "PROTOCOL SEVEN" AND CRUSHED HIM!

The visiting booth at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago was even more brutal than the county jail.

Here, surrounded by concrete reinforced with steel rebar and three layers of bulletproof glass, Richard Sterling sat strapped into a reinforced steel chair bolted to the floor. His wrists were handcuffed to a heavy chain around his waist. He looked like an empty shell. In seventy-two hours, he had aged twenty years. His cheeks were hollow, his skin gray, and the dark circles under his eyes looked like bruises.

The steel door on the visitor’s side opened.

Richard jerked his head up, a pathetic, desperate spark of hope igniting in his dead eyes.

Victoria stepped into the room.

She sat down on the metal stool across from him, resting her hands on the narrow shelf before the Plexiglas. She did not pick up the telephone receiver. She didn't need to. The small, perforated metal speaker between them carried every whisper with crystal clarity.

Richard stared at her, his lips trembling.

"Victoria," he croaked, his voice a broken rasp. "You came."

"I didn't come for you, Richard," Victoria said, her tone cool and measured. "I came to deliver your final divorce decree. Signed by the Chief Justice of the Cook County Circuit Court. You are officially no longer my husband."

Richard swallowed hard, tears finally leaking from his red-rimmed eyes. "Victoria... please. You have to listen to me. The murder charge... it wasn't what it sounded like on that tape. I was drunk. I was bragging to Vanessa! You know how I get when I drink, I talk big, I make things up!"

"We have the dark web bitcoin transfers, Richard," Victoria interrupted, her voice pitiless. "We have the laboratory manifests from Kiev. We have the forensic toxicology reports from my father's exhumation. And we have your signature on the shipment receipts."

Richard hung his head, a broken sob escaping his chest. "I did it for us, Victoria! I did it for us! Arthur was never going to respect me! He treated me like an intern! He was going to push me out and bring in some private equity firm! I wanted to build an empire for us! I wanted you to have everything!"

Victoria leaned forward slightly, her gray eyes drilling into the hollow, sniveling creature before her.

"You didn't do it for us, Richard," she whispered, each word like a drop of liquid nitrogen. "You did it because you are a small, pathetic, insecure narcissist who couldn't bear the thought of living in the shadow of a truly great man. You couldn't handle the fact that Arthur saw right through you. He knew you were weak. He knew that without my father's name and my father's capital, you were nothing more than a mid-level sales rep with an expensive haircut."

"Victoria, please..." Richard begged, rattling the heavy chains around his waist as he tried to lean closer. "Don't let them send me to ADX Florence. Don't let them put me in supermax! I won't survive a month in there! You know what they do to white-collar executives in federal prison! Talk to the prosecutor! Tell them you forgive me! Tell them to give me twenty years instead of life!"

Victoria slowly stood up. She pulled her leather gloves over her fingers, smoothing the soft lambskin down over her knuckles.

"Do you remember what you said to me at the gala, Richard?" she asked softly.

Richard looked up, terrified, unable to speak.

"You slapped me three times in front of two hundred people," Victoria continued, her voice dangerously quiet. "And you leaned into my face, smelling of cheap bourbon, and shouted: *'I run this company.'*"

She looked down at him through the glass, her expression one of utter, absolute finality.

"You never ran this company, Richard," she said. "And you never will again. Enjoy the rest of your life in the dark."

"Victoria! VICTORIA!" Richard shrieked, thrashing against his restraints as she turned toward the door. The heavy chains clanged violently against the metal chair. "DON'T LEAVE ME HERE! VICTORIA! PLEASE!"

Victoria did not look back.