Chapter 8 - The Prison Gate
Six months later.
The summer sun was beating down on the high concrete walls and barbed wire fences of the Fishkill Correctional Facility in upstate New York.
I stood in the visiting room—a sterile, whitewashed space with heavy bulletproof glass partitions and steel chairs bolted to the floor.
I was wearing a simple, elegant cream silk dress, my hair resting loose over my shoulders, my face completely healed, glowing with health and peace.
The heavy iron door on the inmate side of the partition clicked open.
A guard escorted Adrian Vale into the room.
He looked fifty years old, though he was only thirty-six. His hair was cropped short, graying rapidly at the temples. His skin was sallow, yellowed by months of indoor confinement and institutional food. He wore a dark blue state prison uniform, his posture slumped, his hands resting limply in his lap as he sat down opposite me behind the glass.
He picked up the black plastic phone receiver attached to the wall.
I picked up mine.
"Evelyn," Adrian said. His voice was thin, rasping, completely stripped of the booming resonance he used to project in boardrooms.
"Adrian," I replied calmly.
He looked at me through the glass, his eyes sweeping over my face, lingering on my jaw where his leather crop had left its mark six months ago. There was no mark now. No scar. Only smooth, radiant skin.
"I heard about the auction," Adrian whispered, looking down at his rough, calloused hands. "Five million dollars for the crop... to a domestic violence charity."
"It has already funded three new emergency shelters in Brooklyn and Queens," I told him. "More than two hundred women and children are safe tonight because of that money."
Adrian let out a low, bitter laugh that ended in a dry cough. "You always were so... good. So quiet. So perfect. I hated you for it, you know?"
"I know," I said softly.
"I hated feeling like I was standing next to someone who didn't need me," Adrian confessed, a tear gathering in the corner of his eye. "Every man wants his wife to look at him like he's a god. Vanessa... Vanessa made me feel like a king. She clapped at my speeches. She laughed at my jokes. She told me I was the smartest man in Manhattan."
"Vanessa was a mirror, Adrian," I said, my voice holding no anger, only pity. "She reflected what you wanted to see because she wanted your money. She didn't love you. And you didn't love her. You loved the reflection."
Adrian wiped his nose with his sleeve. "I got sentenced yesterday. Fifteen years. The federal judge said I wouldn't be eligible for parole until I serve at least eleven."
"Eleven years is a long time," I noted quietly.
"When I get out... I'll be forty-seven," Adrian whispered, his voice cracking as he pressed his forehead against the cold glass partition. "I have no money. No license to practice finance. No friends. My family won't even accept my phone calls from the prison facility. I have nothing, Evelyn. Absolutely nothing."
I looked at the man who had once stood over me on a marble floor, bragging about his wealth while I bled at his feet.
"You have what you built, Adrian," I said gently. "You spent your whole life pursuing shadows—status, private jets, champagne dresses, and cheap applause. You got exactly what those shadows are worth in the end."
I stood up from my steel chair, setting the phone receiver back onto its wall hook.
"Wait!" Adrian shouted through the glass, his hand slamming against the partition, his face contorted in desperate panic. "Evelyn! Please! Don't leave! Just... just tell me one thing!"
I paused, looking down at him.
"Did you ever love me?" Adrian begged, tears streaming down his face. "Even for a second? When we were in Paris... was any of it real?"
I looked into his desperate, hollow eyes, thinking back to the quiet bistro in the 11th arrondissement, back when I believed a self-made man with big dreams could be worthy of a woman's heart.
"I loved the man I thought you were, Adrian," I said softly, my voice carrying clearly through the glass perforations. "But that man never existed. You invented him using my father's money."
May you like
I turned my back on him and walked toward the exit door.
Behind me, Adrian’s desperate, weeping screams echoed off the whitewashed walls of the visiting room, cut short as the heavy steel security doors closed between us, locking him away in his concrete cell.
