Chapter 13 - Vanessa’s Bitter Confession
Leaving Drake shivering in the interrogation room, Deputy Chief Miller led Dad and me toward the women’s detention wing.
The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, reflecting off the polished linoleum floors in stark, clinical bands.
Vanessa sat behind a thick sheet of scratch-resistant plexiglass in the interview booth, stripped of all her glamorous armor.
Her long platinum-blonde hair was pulled back into a messy, tangled knot held by a plastic elastic band.
The stunning crimson evening gown she had worn on our terrace had been replaced by a baggy, drab orange jumpsuit.
Her manicured nails were bitten down to the quick, and her mascara had smeared into dark, grotesque stains around her sunken eyes.
When the guard escorted Dad and me into the small visitor room on the other side of the glass, Vanessa surged forward against the shelf.
"Richard! Richard, please!" she cried, pressing her palms flat against the transparent partition.
"You have to get me out of here! They put me in a holding cell with violent criminals!"
"My mother has already turned state’s evidence against me to save her own skin!"
"She’s telling the federal investigators that I planned everything, that she was just following my instructions!"
Dad sat down slowly on the swivel stool, his face an impenetrable mask of cold granite.
He didn't touch the telephone handset mounted beside the glass, forcing Vanessa to shout through the perforated steel vent.
"You're right where you belong, Vanessa," Dad said, his deep voice penetrating the metal grille without an ounce of pity.
"Richard, I love you!" she sobbed, tears spilling down her pale, unpowdered cheeks.
"Julian threatened to kill my family if I didn't cooperate!"
"He told me you were abusive, that you ruined him, that Emily was an arrogant brat who needed to be put in her place!"
I stepped up beside my father and picked up the telephone receiver on our side, tapping on the glass.
Vanessa looked at me, her eyes wide with desperate, pleading panic as she scrambled to pick up her own handset.
"Emily, please," Vanessa begged through the earpiece. "You have to tell your father to drop the domestic charges!"
"I'm twenty years old, Vanessa," I said, my voice completely devoid of the trembling girl she had terrorized on the terrace.
"You put a pet collar around my neck in front of thirty-five of our family friends."
"You yanked the leash until my knees struck stone."
"You looked down at me and screamed that I was nothing but a dog."
"Did William Harrison tell you to say those exact words, or did you come up with that cruelty all on your own?"
At the name of William Harrison, Vanessa froze as though struck by lightning, the phone slipping an inch from her ear.
Her mouth fell open, her eyes darting between me and my father in utter, paralyzed astonishment.
"You... you know about Victor?" she stammered, using the alias Drake had revealed.
"His name is William Harrison," Dad interrupted, speaking loudly enough to echo through the receiver.
"He is my brother."
"And he never intended to pay you a single red cent, Vanessa."
Vanessa’s breath hitched in her throat, her manicured fingers trembling so violently that the heavy plastic phone receiver clattered against the glass.
"No... no, that’s impossible," she whispered, shaking her head in frantic denial.
"Victor promised me a five-million-dollar trust account in the Cayman Islands the moment the marriage was finalized."
"He said Richard was a monster who drove his first wife to an early grave."
"He told me that if I provoked Emily into attacking me on camera, Richard would be forced to sign over the conservatorship to save face!"
"William used your insatiable vanity to hang you," Dad said coldly.
"Julian Drake has already confessed everything to the United States Attorney."
"The wire fraud, the forged medical commitment petitions, the corporate espionage."
"You are facing twenty-five years in federal prison with zero possibility of parole, Vanessa."
"And my brother is sitting in a luxury chalet in Geneva, drinking vintage wine while you rot in Cook County."
A primal, guttural scream of absolute fury erupted from Vanessa’s throat, shattering the silence of the detention room.
She slammed both fists against the heavy plexiglass, her face contorted into an ugly, animalistic snarl of betrayed narcissism.
"That bastard!" she shrieked, saliva spraying against the transparent wall.
"He swore he had diplomatic immunity through his Swiss shell companies!"
"He said nobody could touch him!"
The guard behind her immediately stepped forward, placing a heavy hand on her shoulder and forcing her back into the metal chair.
"Sit down, inmate!" the guard commanded firmly.
Vanessa collapsed into the chair, clutching the phone receiver against her ear as ragged sobs racked her body.
"Richard, listen to me," she wept, her voice dropping into a desperate, frantic hiss.
"There’s a lockbox."
"A private safe deposit box at the Swiss National Bank in Zurich."
"Patricia has the second half of the alphanumeric cipher key written inside the lining of her designer vanity case."
"William told her that the safe deposit box contains Sarah's original overseas journal."
"The journal that proves Sarah uncovered William's corporate embezzlement ten years ago, right before his plane went down in the Alps."
"William didn't just stage that crash to escape his creditors, Richard."
"He staged it because Sarah was about to hand that journal to the Department of Justice!"
Dad stood up so abruptly his stool spun back against the wall with a sharp clang.
His gray eyes burned with a profound, terrifying revelation that connected thirty years of family history in a single blinding instant.
"Sarah didn't die of a sudden heart condition, did she?" Dad whispered into the air, the thought striking him like a poisonous blade.
Vanessa looked up through the glass, her face pale as a corpse, her eyes wide with a horrific realization of her own.
"I don't know, Richard," Vanessa whispered through tears. "I swear to God, I don't know."
"All I know is that William said Sarah had to be erased twice."
"Once from the earth, and once from your daughter's heart."
Dad dropped the handset onto the counter without saying another word.
May you like
He grabbed my arm gently but firmly, leading me toward the heavy exit doors with an urgency that shook the very air around us.
Behind us, Vanessa screamed our names through the glass, her cries fading into the sterile concrete maze as the heavy steel doors locked her away forever.
