Chapter 27 - The Prison Visit
Two weeks later, the swelling had gone down, and Noah was sleeping peacefully in his nursery back at our Greenwich estate, guarded round-the-clock by a vetted private security team.
I did not go to Danbury Federal Prison with an attorney.
I went alone.
When Diane Morrison was led into the small, non-contact booth, she wasn't sneering anymore. Her skin was sallow, her hands trembling as she adjusted the heavy iron handcuffs linking her wrists to her waist belt.
She looked at me through the glass, her gaze hollow, empty of the haughty grandeur she had clung to for sixty years.
"Maya failed," Diane said, her voice dry like autumn leaves.
"Maya is facing life without parole in a maximum-security facility in upstate New York," I said evenly. "She named you as the primary co-conspirator. The federal prosecutor filed an indictment for attempted murder of a minor this morning."
Diane flinched as if struck with a whip.
"That means your minimum sentence of ten years just became life without the possibility of parole," I continued, leaning forward until my reflection merged with hers in the scratched plexiglass. "No early release. No compassionate leave. No country-club prison. You will die inside these concrete walls, Diane."
Diane let out a choked sob, tears finally spilling over her wrinkled, sunken cheeks. "I built that name. My father gave me that legacy. You were nobody. You were just a pregnant little nuisance who cleaned my kitchen floors!"
"And that 'nuisance' took everything you ever valued," I said, my voice cold, calm, and absolute. "Your legacy wasn't an empire, Diane. It was a disease. And today, the cure is finished."
I stood up, picked up my leather gloves, and walked toward the heavy steel exit.
"Sarah! Wait!" Diane screamed against the glass, her cuffs rattling violently. "Please! Don't let Brendan forget me! Tell him to write to me! Just one letter!"
May you like
I paused at the door, glancing back over my shoulder one final time.
"Brendan changed his legal name yesterday," I said flatly. "He doesn't have a mother anymore."
