Chapter 6 - The Visitor in Federal Custody
The subterranean detention ward of the Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Chicago smelled of industrial floor wax, cold concrete, and bitter, rotting pride.
Julianna Vance sat on the edge of a stainless-steel cot bolted to the wall of her solitary cell, wearing an oversized orange institutional jumpsuit.
Her styled platinum hair had been buzzed down to the scalp; her expensive manicured vanity had been completely stripped away, her hands and ankles secured with heavy steel transport chains as she waited for her transfer to the federal penitentiary in Danbury.
The heavy steel slider door buzzed open with a loud hydraulic clank.
Adrien Moretti walked into the cell.
He did not hurry. His leather dress boots clicked rhythmically against the concrete with a slow, deliberate cadence. He wore an elegant dark charcoal wool overcoat over his three-piece suit, his posture commanding, sovereign, and entirely unbothered.
Julianna flinched back against the concrete wall, her bloodshot eyes widening in a mixture of feral hatred and visceral panic.
"You came to gloat, Adrien," Julianna spat, her voice cracking into a dry, hoarse rasp.
"I came to look at you, Julianna," Adrien said softly, stopping three paces from the cot. "I wanted to see what forty-two million dollars of stolen vanity looked like when the Versace gown was finally stripped away."
"You were an uncivilized brute who threw away a global logistics merger for a common, heavy-set shopkeeper!" Julianna hissed, leaping to her feet, her transport chains rattling violently against the steel belt around her waist. "I offered you entry into the finest drawing rooms in Lake Forest! I was going to make the Moretti name an international brand! You threw it all away for a woman who smells of book glue!"
"You didn't offer me an empire, Julianna," Adrien replied, his slate-gray eyes locking onto hers with freezing clarity. "You offered me a slaughterhouse where predators feed on other people's dignity to feel powerful. You believed that because Grace was gentle, she was weak. You believed that because her body was soft, her spirit could be broken."
Adrien reached into his coat pocket, pulling out a copy of the morning's unsealed federal grand jury indictment.
He dropped the heavy document onto the steel cot.
"Robert Moretti signed a full plea-allocution at sunrise, Julianna," Adrien said. "He detailed every offshore routing token, every forged signature proxy, and the fact that you ordered the surveillance of Grace’s studio three months before our wedding."
Julianna’s breath hitched in her throat. She looked down at the forty-eight felony counts listed on the parchment, her hands shaking so violently that the paper fluttered against her knees.
"Robert... confessed?" she whispered, her voice finally breaking into a pathetic, terrified whimper.
"Robert saved himself, Julianna," Adrien answered quietly. "Just as you tried to save yourself at the Casino Club. The Vance estate has been completely liquidated by the federal receivership, and your legal defense trust has a balance of zero."
Julianna collapsed onto the cot, burying her face in her cuffed hands, weeping with the raw, ugly agony of a woman who had realized that her vanity had left her completely alone in the dark.
"Adrien... please," she sobbed through her fingers. "Tell Grace I'm sorry... tell her I was insane... ask Arthur to drop the racketeering counts..."
Adrien looked at the broken woman on the cot.
The charming socialite who had smiled across ballroom tables was gone forever, replaced by an empty shell whose cruelty had consumed her own soul.
"Grace didn't come to see you, Julianna," Adrien whispered softly. "Because you ceased to exist the moment you touched her peace. And now you can spend the rest of your life counting the days in the cold."
Adrien turned his back on the broken conspirator.
May you like
"Guard," Adrien called out.
The heavy steel door slid open, and Adrien walked down the echoing corridor into the bright morning sunshine of Chicago, leaving Julianna Vance to weep in the concrete shadows where she would remain for thirty-two long years.
