Chapter 5 - VISITING HOURS
The visitation room at the Metropolitan Correctional Center was cold, sterile, and smelled of industrial bleach and old floor wax. Thick plexiglass divided the small cubicles, and the fluorescent lights overhead buzzed with an annoying, high-pitched hum.
I sat on a metal stool on one side of the glass, wearing a comfortable cashmere sweater over my pregnant belly.
A heavy steel door opened on the opposite side, and two armed guards escorted a man in an orange prison jumpsuit into the room.
It was Alexander.
In just four days, the polished, handsome, arrogant heir to the Vale empire had completely disintegrated. His hair was greasy and unstyled, dark purple circles shadowed his sunken eyes, and his hands were shaking violently as he sat down on the stool across from me.
He picked up the black plastic telephone receiver with a trembling hand.
I picked up mine.
“Clara,” Alexander begged, his voice coming through the speaker cracked, raspy, and filled with desperate panic. “Clara, thank God. Thank God you came. You have to fix this. You have to tell them it was a mistake!”
I didn't speak. I just watched him through the glass, feeling an astonishing sense of absolute nothingness. The man I had cried over for six years now looked like a pitiful stranger.
“Clara, please!” Alexander pressed his hand against the glass. “They’re keeping me in a cell with three other men! The food is inedible! My lawyer says the evidence you gave them... they’re talking about twenty to thirty years, Clara! Thirty years!”
“Minimum,” I corrected quietly through the phone. “With your charges of forgery and conspiracy, the prosecutor is pushing for thirty-five.”
Alexander squeezed his eyes shut, a tear slipping down his nose. “Clara, I’m sorry. I swear to God I’m sorry! I was stupid. Vivian was a mistake! She meant nothing to me! She manipulated me! She was using me for money!”
I let out a soft, dry laugh. “Vivian didn't push me into a cake at my own baby shower, Alexander. Vivian didn't forge my name on trust documents. Vivian didn't bankrupt my father and cause his heart attack six years ago.”
Alexander froze. His eyes snapped open, terror flaring in his pupils. “You... you know about Arthur?”
“I know everything,” I said, my voice dropping into a register so cold it made him flinch. “I know your father planted contraband on his ships. I know you sat in the boardroom and toasted with champagne when my father’s business died. And I know you married me because your father thought I was a loose end that needed to be managed.”
“Clara, no... it wasn't like that!” Alexander pleaded, banging his fist weakly against the glass. “I loved you! In the beginning, I really loved you!”
“You loved having a quiet, broken girl who worshipped you,” I replied instantly. “You loved feeling powerful because you thought you saved me. But you didn't save me, Alexander. You trapped me.”
Alexander buried his face in his hands, weeping openly now. The arrogant billionaire had been stripped down to a pathetic child. “What do you want, Clara? What do you want from me? I’ll sign the divorce papers! I’ll give you everything! Just talk to the prosecutor. Tell them I didn't know about Richard’s pension fund transfers! Save me!”
I leaned in closer to the glass, looking directly into his broken, tear-streaked face.
“I didn't come here to save you, Alexander,” I said softly. “I came here to give you these.”
I held up a white legal document against the glass.
“These are the final divorce papers,” I explained. “Along with a court petition for the total termination of your parental rights.”
Alexander gasped, pressing his face closer to the glass. “No! No, Clara, you can’t do that! That’s my child! That’s my heir!”
“You forfeited your right to be a father the second you pushed us onto that floor,” I said firmly. “My child will never bear the name Vale. My child will never know your face. My child will grow up knowing that their mother brought down a corrupt empire to protect them.”
“I won't sign it!” Alexander screamed, his voice echoing through the visitation room. “I won't sign it! I’ll fight you in court! I have rights!”
“With what money?” I asked innocently. “Your personal accounts were frozen this morning. Your trust fund has been attached to the pension recovery lawsuit. You can’t even afford a private defense attorney, Alexander. Tomorrow morning, you’ll be assigned a public defender.”
Alexander stared at me, his breath hitching in his chest as the reality of his situation crushed him like a hydraulic press. He had no money. No power. No friends. No family to save him.
“Sign the papers, Alexander,” I said, pushing the document under the small slot at the bottom of the glass partition along with a pen. “Or I will instruct the corporate board to file a civil restitution lawsuit against you personally for eighty million dollars.”
Alexander’s hand shook so violently he could barely hold the pen. Tears fell onto the white paper, smudging the ink, as he scribbled his signature on the dotted line.
He slid the papers back to me, looking up with hollow, defeated eyes. “Are you happy now, Clara? You’ve destroyed my life.”
I picked up the signed documents, checking the signature carefully, before placing them neatly into my leather bag.
I looked at Alexander one last time.
May you like
“You destroyed your own life, Alexander,” I said quietly. “I just stopped letting you destroy mine.”
I hung up the plastic telephone, stood up, and walked out of the visitation room, leaving him screaming and weeping against the glass as the guards pulled him away.
