Chapter 6 - The Visitor in the Cage
The Suffolk County House of Correction was a brutal, concrete monolith that smelled of industrial bleach, floor wax, and defeated adrenaline.
I hadn't planned on going. Every attorney on my team had advised against it, warning me that Ethan would attempt to manipulate me, that he would use any meeting to claim I was still emotionally entangled, that it served no strategic purpose.
They were right about the strategy. But they were wrong about the human heart.
I didn't go to Ethan to seek closure. Closure is a comfortable, bourgeois myth invented by people who have never had their lives detonated from the inside out. I went because I needed to look at the monster without his suit, without his money, and without the stage lights, so I could burn the last remnants of his phantom out of my memory.
I sat behind a scratched pane of thick plexiglass in the non-contact visitation room.
When the heavy steel door clicked open on the other side, Ethan walked in with the shambling, awkward gait of a man whose shoelaces had been confiscated.
He wore an oversized orange jumpsuit made of rough, synthetic cotton that hung off his frame. In just four weeks, he had lost at least fifteen pounds. His skin was pale and waxy, dotted with razor burn from cheap disposable institutional razors, and the dark circles under his eyes were the color of bruised plums. The charismatic prodigy had vanished; in his place was a hollow, frightened wraith.
He sat down on the bolted metal stool, picking up the heavy black plastic receiver with trembling fingers.
I picked up mine.
"Vivian," he choked out, his voice buzzing through the cheap diaphragm of the handset. He pressed his free hand against the glass, his fingers spread wide in desperation. "Vivian, thank God. Thank God you came. You have to listen to me. You have to call the US Attorney. They’re putting me in maximum security—they’re treating me like a violent cartel boss! I can’t survive in here, Viv. You know me. You know my heart."
"I do know your heart, Ethan," I said, my voice level, completely devoid of inflection. "That’s why I brought your mail."
I held an envelope against the glass. It was a formal notification from the Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers, alongside an eviction notice from the management company of the Beacon Hill brownstone.
"The brownstone was leased under the Ward Family Operating Company," I said. "Your clothes, your watches, your custom suits, and your car collection have been inventoried. Because they were purchased with diverted funds from the pediatric cancer endowment, they have been surrendered to the federal receiver to be auctioned off for restitution."
"Vivian, please!" His voice cracked, a desperate, pathetic whine that echoed off the cinderblock walls of the visitor booth. A guard standing near the rear door shifted his weight, his eyes narrowing warningly at Ethan. Ethan dropped his voice, leaning so close to the partition that his breath fogged the acrylic. "I loved you! Everything I did—yes, I got lost, yes, Sloane manipulated me—she got inside my head, Viv! She told me you were going to push me out after Arthur died! She told me you were meeting with corporate divorce attorneys in New York!"
"Sloane didn't manipulate you, Ethan," I said. "You hired her. You brought her into the firm because you needed someone whose family name carried social weight in circles where the Ward name was considered too old-fashioned, too restrained."
"We can fix this," he pleaded, tears finally spilling over his lashes, carving erratic tracks through the grime on his cheeks. "I have offshore accounts they haven't found yet. In Lichtenstein. Twelve million. Untraceable. I'll sign them over to you! Every single cent! Just tell the prosecutors that you authorized the transfers. Tell them it was a misunderstanding, an internal hedge strategy that went wrong! I’ll sign a post-nuptial agreement. I’ll leave the country. You’ll never have to see me again!"
I stared at him through the glass.
I looked at the mouth that had kissed me on our wedding day beneath an arbor of white hydrangeas in Nantucket. I looked at the hands that had held mine while we buried my father. And for the first time in four weeks, the crushing, suffocating weight in my chest lifted.
Not because I felt pity. But because I felt absolutely nothing.
The man sitting before me wasn't a criminal mastermind. He wasn't a tragic, fallen partner. He was simply a petty, cowardly thief who had stolen things too large for him to carry, and now that the burden was crushing his spine, he was begging the person he had robbed to lift the weight.
"The Lichtenstein accounts were seized yesterday at 2:00 PM Central European Time, Ethan," I said softly.
He stopped breathing. His jaw dropped, his eyes bulging. "What?"
"Agent Vance and the Swiss Federal Prosecutor's office executed a mutual legal assistance treaty warrant on the Private Bank of Zurich," I explained with quiet precision. "They found the routing numbers on the encrypted flash drive you hid inside your father’s old fly-fishing tackle box in our garage. You always were sentimental about the wrong things."
Ethan’s face went entirely slack. The receiver slipped an inch in his hand.
"I didn't come here to negotiate with you, Ethan," I continued, leaning in slightly, my eyes locking onto his with terrifying clarity. "I came here to tell you that tomorrow morning, the sign comes down off the Meridian Tower. Mercer-Hale is dead. By nine o'clock, the company will be re-registered under its original charter: The Ward Foundation & Capital Logistics. I am taking my father’s seat as Chief Executive Officer."
"Vivian..." he breathed, his voice a ghost. "Don't do this. Don't leave me in here."
"Happy fourth anniversary, Ethan," I said.
May you like
I hung up the receiver.
I stood up, smoothed the front of my dark wool coat, and walked toward the heavy steel exit doors without looking back. Behind me, the muffled sound of Ethan screaming my name beat against the reinforced glass, over and over, until the pneumatic lock hissed shut and cut him off from the world.
