"At my birthday party, my husband tied me to a ceiling beam and whipped me thirty times because I had stained his mistress’s dress. “Maybe now you’ll learn your place,” he laughed while everyone watched. I didn’t cry. When they finally cut me down, I picked up my phone and called my five gangster brothers. “Make his entire family beg for mercy,” I whispered. Then the front gates suddenly slammed shut.

The holding facility at the state penitentiary was constructed entirely of gray, reinforced concrete and heavy steel bars. It was cold, damp, and smelled perpetually of despair.

Isaac sat on a rusted metal bench, staring at the floor. In seventy-two hours, he had lost fifteen pounds. His cheeks were hollow, his eyes sunken, shadowed with dark purple circles. The arrogant posture that had defined his life had been completely crushed out of him.

The heavy steel door at the end of the corridor buzzed open.

Isaac snapped his head up, a pathetic flicker of hope igniting in his chest. “Mom? Did you talk to her? Did she agree?!”

The visitor who stepped into the narrow interrogation booth was not his mother.

It was Noah.

Noah was dressed in a dark, impeccably tailored overcoat. He sat down slowly on the opposite side of the reinforced glass partition, picking up the heavy plastic phone receiver.

Isaac grabbed his phone with trembling hands, his knuckles turning white. “Where is Flora?! Why didn't she come?! Tell her I’ll give her everything! The properties, the trust funds, the corporate equity—she can have it all! Just get me out of here! The inmates here... they know who I am! They know what I did to her!”

Noah leaned in close to the glass, his expression dead and immovable.

“There are no trust funds left, Isaac,” Noah spoke, his voice smooth and terrifyingly calm through the receiver. “There is no corporate equity. Yesterday, Julian purchased the liquidated remains of Vance International for pennies on the dollar. The name *Vance* has been legally struck from every building, every sign, and every public ledger in the country.”

Isaac’s breath hitched. “What... what did you say?”

“The company is gone, Isaac. The estate is gone. Your father cannot speak, your mother is living in a government shelter, and Clover Davies has agreed to testify against you in exchange for a five-year sentence.”

Isaac began to shake violently, pressing his forehead against the cold glass. “Why are you doing this to me? I only whipped her! Couples fight! It was a private matter!”

Noah’s eyes narrowed into twin slits of pure obsidian.

“You tied my sister to a ceiling like an animal,” Noah said, every word hitting Isaac like a sledgehammer. “You struck her thirty times to amuse a room full of sycophants. You thought she had no one to defend her because she chose to live quietly. You thought she was weak because she was kind.”

Noah paused, letting the silence hang between them like a guillotine.

“I didn't come here to negotiate, Isaac. I came here to tell you that tomorrow, you will be transferred to Blackthorn Penitentiary. The warden there is an old comrade of mine. The guards are former members of my tactical units. You will serve every single day of your twenty-five-year sentence.”

Noah slowly stood up, placing the phone back on its hook.

“Every time you look at the ceiling of your cell,” Noah whispered through the small speaker grille, “remember the beam you hung her from.”

Isaac began screaming, slamming his fists against the bulletproof glass, begging, crying, and pleading as two guards entered his cell, forcing him down to his knees and twisting his arms behind his back.