Chapter 11 - When The Mask Finally Cracks
On Friday afternoon, Katherine Ross called my private line.
"Claire wants to see you, Alex," Katherine said.
"She’s being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center downtown."
"Her public defender says she refuses to sign the plea agreement unless she speaks with you face-to-face."
I looked out through the French doors of my Bel-Air study.
In the backyard, the afternoon sun cast a warm golden glow across the lush green lawn.
Emma was teaching Lily how to throw a small yellow soccer ball near the pool.
Maria was sitting on the stone patio, peeling fresh oranges into a ceramic bowl, laughing at Lily’s clumsy kicks.
Daniel was standing near the perimeter wall, his hands folded behind his back, watchful, calm, and peaceful.
My house was finally a home again.
"Set it up, Katherine," I said. "I’ll be there in thirty minutes."
The visiting room at MDC was cold, sterile, and smelled of industrial bleach.
Claire sat behind the thick plexiglass partition, wearing a bright orange jumpsuit that swallowed her thin frame.
Her wrists were chained to a steel ring bolted into the metal table.
Her golden hair was tied back in an unwashed ponytail.
The dark circles beneath her hollow eyes made her look twenty years older.
When I sat down on the metal stool on the other side of the glass, she picked up the black telephone receiver with trembling fingers.
I lifted mine to my ear.
"You look pleased with yourself, Alex," she sneered, her voice sounding tinny and distorted through the earpiece.
"I look like a father whose children are safe," I replied quietly.
Claire leaned closer to the glass, her yellowed teeth showing through a bitter, twisted smirk.
"You think you won?" she whispered.
"You think this is over because I’m wearing orange?"
"You will never sleep peacefully again, Alex."
"Every time you hear a floorboard creak in that giant mausoleum, you will wonder if another Vance is coming for your girls."
"You will look at Emma and Lily and remember that half their blood belongs to a family of monsters."
I didn't blink.
I didn't raise my voice.
I looked straight into the dead, empty eyes of the woman who had almost ruined my life.
"Emma and Lily don't belong to the Vance bloodline, Claire," I said, my voice steady as stone.
"They belong to Sofia."
"Sofia showed them what love looked like before she died."
"And Maria showed them what loyalty looked like when the darkness closed in."
"You spent your whole life hunting eighty-four million dollars, and in the end, it couldn't even buy you twenty minutes of freedom."
Claire’s smirk vanished.
Her jaw trembled with uncontainable fury.
"I hated them," she hissed, her spit hitting the plexiglass.
"I hated every second I spent pretending to care about your pathetic, whining brats!"
"I should have given them the full dose while you were still in the bunker!"
"I know," I said softly.
"And that confession just went directly into the federal recording system behind you."
Claire froze.
Her eyes widened in horror as she looked up at the tiny red light blinking on the camera dome above her head.
"Goodbye, Claire," I said.
May you like
I hung up the receiver, stood up from the stool, and walked out through the heavy steel door.
I never looked back.
