Chapter 8 - The Interrogation Room
Three days later, I was discharged from the hospital.
My hand was healing remarkably well, protected by a sleek, lightweight carbon-fiber brace designed specifically by Dr. Chen’s clinic.
Before I boarded my father’s private Gulfstream to return to our family estate in New York, there was one final task I needed to complete.
At 2:00 PM, my black Maybach pulled up behind the imposing concrete fortress of the Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Chicago.
Director Campbell escorted me through the high-security security checkpoints, down a maze of dim, sterile corridors, until we reached a private attorney-client visiting room.
The room was cold, lit by buzzing fluorescent tubes. In the center sat a metal table bolted to the concrete floor, flanked by two plastic chairs.
Sitting on the far side of the table, dressed in a standard-issue orange prison jumpsuit, was Nathan Cross.
He looked unrecognizable.
The polished, dashing corporate CEO who had preened in front of bathroom mirrors and boasted to financial reporters was gone. In his place sat an emaciated, hollow-eyed shell of a man. His nose was crooked, swollen, and surrounded by sickly yellow and purple bruises. His expensive haircut was disheveled, and his face was covered in an uneven three-day stubble.
When the door clicked shut behind me, Nathan raised his head.
When he saw me, a sudden, desperate flare of hope sparked in his bloodshot eyes. He lunged forward, rattling the heavy metal chains securing his wrists to the loop on the table.
“Claire!” he gasped, his voice cracked and raw. “Claire, you came! I knew you’d come! I knew you couldn't just throw away six years! Please, Claire, look at me!”
I sat down calmly in the plastic chair across from him. Director Campbell remained standing silently by the door, his hands clasped behind his back like a granite sentinel.
I rested my left arm on the table, the black carbon-fiber brace clearly visible.
Nathan’s eyes fell upon the brace, and he flinched, pulling his chained hands back toward his chest.
“I didn't come to save you, Nathan,” I said, my voice level and quiet. “I came to bring you this.”
I slid a sealed manila envelope across the metal table.
Nathan stared at it with trembling hesitation. With awkward, clinking movements of his handcuffed hands, he tore open the envelope and pulled out the contents.
It was the final decree of absolute divorce, bearing the gold seal of the Cook County Circuit Court and the judge’s signature. Attached to it was an official eviction notice and a federal bankruptcy liquidation schedule.
Nathan’s hands shook so hard the paper fluttered like dry leaves.
“You... you actually divorced me,” he whispered, tears welling in his eyes once more. “Without even a hearing? Without letting me speak?”
“You spoke three nights ago, Nathan,” I replied. “You spoke with your fists and your cruelty. The law simply listened.”
“Claire, please!” he sobbed, leaning across the table as far as his chains would permit. “They’re going to indict me on twenty-two counts of federal financial fraud! The public defender told me I’m looking at twenty to thirty years at a federal penitentiary in Terre Haute! Thirty years! I’ll be an old man when I get out! I’ll have nothing!”
“You came into my life with nothing, Nathan,” I said coldly. “You had a mountain of secret credit card debt and an unpaid student loan when we met at that charity gala in Boston. I paid off your debts through an anonymous scholarship grant. I introduced you to the venture capitalists who funded your first warehouse. I gave you the world, and you convinced yourself that you were a god who conquered it alone.”
Nathan began to weep openly, burying his bruised face into his handcuffed hands. The metallic clinking of the chains was the only sound in the dreary room.
“What about Vanessa?” he choked out through his tears. “What did you do to her?”
I offered a thin, mirthless smile.
“Vanessa didn't waste any time, Nathan. She entered a plea agreement with the Department of Justice yesterday afternoon.”
Nathan’s head snapped up. “What?!”
“In exchange for a recommendation for a reduced sentence at a minimum-security facility, Vanessa has agreed to testify as the state’s primary star witness against you,” I explained, watching the final shred of his soul shatter into dust. “She handed over every personal audio recording, every text message, and every offshore account routing number you ever shared with her. She told the prosecutors that you coerced her into signing the fraudulent customs manifests.”
Nathan stared at me in stunned, paralyzed disbelief.
“She... she betrayed me?” Nathan stammered, his voice climbing an octave. “I gave her everything! I bought her an apartment in Gold Coast! I bought her a Porsche! I broke your fingers for her!”
“And now she’s trading thirty years of your life to save ten of her own,” I said, standing up from the metal chair. “You two truly deserve each other. Two parasites who mistook greed for ambition.”
Nathan reached out, trying to grab the edge of my coat, but the chains pulled tight, jerking his arms back with a violent clatter.
“Claire! Don't leave me here! Please! Tell your father to call the federal prosecutor! Just drop the offshore charges! I’ll sign whatever you want! I’ll scrub toilets! Just don't let them send me to prison!”
I looked down at the man I had once thought I would spend the rest of my life with.
I felt no rage. I felt no vengeful joy.
I only felt a profound, liberating emptiness.
“Goodbye, Nathan,” I said.
I turned toward the door. Campbell knocked twice, and the correctional officer unlocked the heavy steel latch.
As the door swung open, Nathan’s screams echoed down the concrete hallway:
May you like
“Claire! Claire, please! CLAIRE!”
The heavy door slammed shut, cutting off his cries with the finality of a tombstone.
