Chapter 4 - The Glass Wall
The visitation room at the Buncombe County Detention Center smelled of commercial floor wax, stale coffee, and industrial bleach.
Three days after my emergency C-section, I sat in a heavy steel wheelchair on one side of a reinforced acrylic glass partition. I was wearing a thick black wool coat over my hospital gown, my hair pulled back into a tight, neat bun. Beside me stood my probate attorney, Marcus Vance—no relation to my father, but one of the fiercest corporate litigators in North Carolina—and Agent Diana Cruz.
On the other side of the glass wall, a heavy metal door buzzed open.
Two uniformed guards led my father inside.
Thomas Vance looked completely unraveled. The tailored linen shirt he had worn in the forest was replaced by an oversized orange inmate jumpsuit. His polished hair was greasy and uncombed, dark violet circles bruising the skin beneath his hollow eyes. His hands were bound at his waist by a heavy steel belly-chain, his ankles shackled.
He sat down heavily on the metal stool, picking up the black plastic telephone receiver with shaking, manicured fingers.
I picked up my receiver, raising it to my ear, watching him with an expression devoid of any human warmth.
"Chloe!" Thomas cried out through the static of the receiver, his voice high, frantic, and desperate. "Chloe, thank God! You have to tell these people it was a mistake! Tell the district attorney we were just taking you on an outing! Tell them you got lost on the trail and we were searching for you!"
I let him scream into the receiver for thirty seconds without interrupting him, watching the sweat bead along his forehead.
"Are you finished, Thomas?" I asked quietly.
He flinched, the cold formality of my address hitting him like a physical slap. "Thomas...? Chloe, I'm your father! You can't let them do this to me! They have me in high-security isolation! They're talking about federal wire fraud, kidnapping, and conspiracy to commit murder!"
"That’s because you committed federal wire fraud, kidnapping, and conspiracy to commit murder," I replied smoothly, resting my hands comfortably in my lap.
"It was Brittany's idea!" Thomas blurted out, pointing a trembling, handcuffed finger toward the hallway where the female detention wing was located. "She was the one who said we should drive you out to the service road! She said the stress would make you reasonable! Eleanor and I were just trying to save the family business!"
"You always were a coward," I said softly, a cold smile touching the corners of my lips. "Blaming your twenty-two-year-old daughter for the financial grave you dug yourself."
"Chloe, please!" Thomas wept, pressing his forehead against the glass partition. "They’re liquidating everything! The bank seized the house in Biltmore Forest! They froze the corporate accounts! We have nothing left! If you don't drop the charges, we’ll lose everything!"
Marcus Vance, my litigator, stepped closer to the partition, opening a thick leather folder and pressing a document flat against the glass for my father to read.
"Mr. Vance," Marcus spoke into a secondary receiver. "My name is Marcus Vance. I represent your daughter and the Estate of Mark Reed. I am serving you with a formal civil complaint under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act."
Thomas stared at the document through the glass, his eyes wild with terror. "RICO...?"
"We have successfully executed an emergency federal freezing order on all personal and corporate assets associated with you, Eleanor Vance, and Brittany Vance," Marcus reported with clinical precision. "Furthermore, the State Bureau of Investigation has formally linked the encrypted hard drives found in your trunk to the arson and explosion at Mark Reed’s testing laboratory."
Thomas’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. The color drained from his face until he looked like a corpse in an orange jumpsuit.
"The federal prosecutor," Marcus continued, "has offered a global plea agreement. If you execute a full, unconditional surrender of all claims to Mark's patents, sign over the deed to your remaining commercial properties to the Estate Trust, and enter a guilty plea to grand kidnapping and corporate extortion... the state will decline to seek the maximum life sentence for attempted murder."
"Life sentence...?" Thomas whispered, his body trembling so violently the steel shackles rattled against the metal table.
"You have twenty-four hours to accept the plea," I said, picking up the conversation. "If you refuse, I will personally take the stand at your trial. I will describe every single minute I spent sitting in the dirt of that forest while my baby's heart rate was failing."
I leaned closer to the glass partition, my eyes locking onto his terrified gaze with an absolute, unyielding power.
"You thought you left a weak, grieving widow to die in those woods, Thomas," I whispered into the phone. "You didn't realize you were leaving the woman who was going to dismantle your life piece by piece."
I hung up the receiver, setting it back on its wall hook with a sharp, final CLACK.
I didn't wait for him to respond. I didn't look back as he began pounding his cuffed hands against the glass, screaming my name through the thick acrylic as the guards seized his arms and dragged him backward through the heavy steel door.
May you like
I turned my wheelchair around, looking at Marcus and Agent Cruz.
"Let's go home," I said smoothly. "My daughter is waiting for her bottle."
