Chapter 5 - Bianca’s Desperation
While Arthur was making quiet arrangements to board a private flight to Zurich, Bianca Thorne was experiencing the brutal reality of Rikers Island. Unable to post her five-million-dollar bail after her father refused to liquidate his remaining personal assets to help her, she spent three weeks in a high-security holding facility.
On a rainy Tuesday afternoon, my phone rang. It was Detective Vance.
"Claire, Bianca Thorne’s attorney just contacted the DA," Vance said. "She’s panicking. Ethan’s defense team is preparing to throw her entirely under the bus, claiming she coerced him into the financial fraud and that she acted alone in assaulting you."
"She didn't act alone in the fraud," I noted. "Ethan was greedier than she was."
"She knows that," Vance said. "And now she wants to talk to you. She claims she has physical evidence that proves Arthur Cole was directing the money laundering operations long before you and Ethan got divorced."
An hour later, accompanied by Evelyn, I walked into the visitor interrogation room at the Manhattan Detention Complex.
Bianca was sitting at the metal table, wearing a gray prison jumpsuit. Her signature blonde hair was pulled back in a untidy ponytail, and her face was devoid of makeup, highlighting deep purple circles beneath her eyes. When I sat down across from her, she didn't look at me with anger. She looked at me with sheer, desperate terror.
"Claire," Bianca choked out, her voice raspy. "Please... you have to listen to me."
"I’m listening, Bianca," I said calmly, placing my hands on the table.
"Ethan lied to me about everything," she sobbed, pressing her palms together in a pleading gesture. "He told me you were insane, that you were dragging out the divorce to steal his money. He told me that Arthur was funding our wedding gift with corporate dividends!"
"You pushed me down a flight of concrete stairs while I was eight months pregnant," I reminded her, my voice ice-cold. "You could have killed my son."
"I didn't know!" Bianca cried. "Arthur told me to track you down! He said you had stolen a flash drive containing proprietary company code that belonged to him. He told me that if I got that drive back from you, he would clear my father’s gambling debts! He set me up, Claire! He used my father's debt to force me to stalk you!"
Evelyn leaned forward. "Do you have proof that Arthur instructed you to confront Claire?"
Bianca nodded frantically. She pulled a folded piece of paper from her pocket and slid it across the table. It was a printout of an encrypted text conversation between Bianca and Arthur Cole, sent the morning of the attack.
Arthur: "She has the master drive in her purse. Get it before she reaches her lawyer. If she succeeds, we all go down. Do whatever it takes."
I scanned the text timestamps. The message had been sent twenty minutes before Bianca ambushed me in the St. Matthew’s parking garage. Arthur hadn't just stolen twelve million dollars—he had personally orchestrated the violent assault on me to recover the forensic evidence that exposed him.
"This is the smoking gun," Evelyn whispered to me. "Arthur isn't just an accessory. He's an accessory before the fact to aggravated assault and conspiracy to commit murder."
I looked at Bianca, whose body was shaking with uncontrollable sobs. "If you testify against Arthur and hand over your phone for digital forensics, I will tell the prosecutor to consider a plea agreement for your charges."
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Bianca fell to her knees beside the metal table, crying hysterically. "Thank you... thank you, Claire! I'm so sorry... I'm so sorry!"
I stood up, adjusting my coat. "Don't thank me yet, Bianca. You're still going to prison for what you did to Noah. But Arthur Cole is going with you."
