Chapter 7 - The Beggar in the Cell
Three weeks after his arrest, Adrian’s legal defense team collapsed entirely. Unable to pay his legal retainers after Vance & Sterling froze his assets, he was assigned a overworked public defender.
Desperate, terrified, and facing up to twenty years in federal prison, Adrian begged his lawyer to arrange a meeting with me in the visitation room of the Metropolitan Detention Center.
I agreed to go—not out of mercy, but to close the final chapter of my past.
The metal door clicked open, and Adrian was led inside in handcuffs, wearing a wrinkled orange jumpsuit. He looked gaunt, hollow-eyed, his former sleek arrogance completely shattered.
He sat down across the glass partition, picking up the heavy telephone receiver with trembling hands.
I picked up mine, looking at him with calm, unbothered detachment.
"Victoria... oh God, Victoria, thank you for coming," Adrian sobbed into the phone, pressing his face against the glass. "Please... you have to tell your father to drop the charges! They're going to destroy me in here! I can't survive prison!"
"You did this to yourself, Adrian," I said, my voice steady through the receiver.
"I was manipulated!" Adrian lied frantically, his eyes darting around the room. "Vanessa... she seduced me! Her father threatened my business! I was under so much financial pressure, Victoria, I wasn't in my right mind! I love you! I love our children!"
"You brought her to my hospital room, Adrian," I reminded him, every word sharp as a surgeon's scalpel. "My body was cut open. My babies were three hours old. You placed divorce papers beside their bassinets and told me I was too ugly to keep."
"I was foolish! I was an idiot!" he wept, banging his forehead against the glass. "Please, Victoria! Think of the triplets! They need a father! I'll do whatever you want! I'll sign over everything! I'll work for your father's firm as a clerk! Just let me come home!"
I looked at the man I had spent six years trying to please—a man whose love was so shallow it vanished at the first sign of trouble, a man who thought money and power were everything.
"My children don't need a coward for a father, Adrian," I said quietly. "They have a grandfather who protects them, a grandmother who teaches them, and a mother who will never let anyone hurt them again."
"Victoria, please!" he begged as I stood up.
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"The divorce is finalized, Adrian," I said, setting the phone down. "And today, I officially changed the children's last name to Vance."
I turned my back on his screams and walked out into the sunlight.
