Chapter 7 - The Confrontation in Orange
The visitation room at the Lake County High-Security Facility was cold, sterile, and smelled of cheap floor wax and stale rust. Thick, reinforced plexiglass divided the room into small booths, each equipped with a heavy black plastic telephone receiver.
I sat on the hard metal stool on the visitor's side, wearing a custom navy suit, looking completely out of place in the bleak, concrete room.
A heavy steel door pulled open on the inmate side.
Corrine Sterling was led into the room by two armed female corrections officers.
The transformation was shocking.
The seventy-five-thousand-dollar Chanel suit, the diamond earrings, and the perfectly styled blonde hair were gone. She was wearing an ill-fitting, bright orange jumpsuit made of rough canvas. Her face was bare, pale, and deeply wrinkled without her daily luxury cosmetics. Her manicured nails were broken, her hair pulled back into a messy, greasy knot, and her wrists were bound by heavy steel handcuffs connected to a chain around her waist.
She sat down heavily on the stool across from me, her eyes red, swollen, and wild with a mix of fury and desperate, clawing terror.
She snatched up the heavy plastic telephone receiver with shaking, handcuffed hands.
I picked up my receiver slowly, holding it against my ear, staring through the thick glass without a shred of emotion.
"Thane!" Corrine’s voice shrieked through the earpiece—raspy, cracked, and breathless. "Thane, look at me! Look at what they're doing to your mother! They have me sleeping on a thin cot with crazy murderers! They gave me cold oatmeal for breakfast! Tell these pigs who I am! Tell them to open these cuffs right now!"
I stared at her in dead silence for five seconds before speaking. "You are Inmate Number 88492, Corrine."
Corrine slammed her cuffed hands against the plexiglass partition, the steel chain clanking loudly against the metal counter. "Don't you dare call me that! I am your mother! I gave birth to you in a public hospital! I starved so you could go to private school!"
"And I paid you back with thirty million dollars over ten years," I replied flatly. "A deal that ended at two in the morning when you put your knee on my pregnant wife's back."
"She provoked me!" Corrine screamed into the phone, her face turning purple with rage. "She was arrogant, Thane! She looked down on me! She thought because she was carrying your heir, she was the new queen of the Sterling family! I had to teach her her place! I had to show her that I am the matriarch!"
"You're not a matriarch, Corrine," I said quietly. "You're a parasite that managed to latch onto a host long enough to grow comfortable. But today, the host detached."
"What do you mean?" she gasped, her eyes darting wildly. "Where is my lawyer? Why hasn't Arthur posted my bail? The public defender they gave me is a thirty-year-old child who told me I should take a plea deal for fifteen years in state prison!"
"Arthur resigned," I informed her smoothly. "Every private legal firm in California has refused to represent you. You will be going to trial with your court-appointed public defender."
"You... you can't do that!" she whimpered, her voice suddenly losing its aggressive edge, replaced by a terrifying realization. "What about my bail? Pay the bail, Thane! It's only two million dollars! You spend that on a painting!"
"The judge set your bail at five million dollars cash this morning following the release of the full medical report regarding Alora’s internal injuries," I said. "And since every single one of your personal bank accounts, trust funds, and credit lines has been permanently frozen or seized, you don't have five million dollars. In fact, Corrine... you don't even have five dollars for a cup of coffee at the commissary."
Corrine froze, her jaw dropping open, her eyes bulging through the glass. "What... what did you say?"
"The Napa estate has been repossessed," I listed off methodically. "Your luxury vehicles have been impounded. Your diamond collection has been seized by court order. Your allowance has been permanently terminated. As of twelve o'clock today, you are completely, utterly destitute."
"No... no, no, no!" Corrine began to weep hysterically, pulling frantically against her waist chain, her handcuffs digging into her bruised wrists. "You can't take my house! You bought that for me! It's mine!"
"It was never yours," I corrected her. "It was owned by my holding company. I permitted you to live there. A permission that was officially revoked three hours ago. Your staff has been dismissed. Your clothes are being packed into cardboard boxes and donated to local women's shelters."
"You monster!" Corrine spat against the glass, her eyes burning with pure, unadulterated hatred. "You ruthless, cold-blooded monster! I wish I had aborted you! I wish I had left you in the street when your father died!"
"I know," I said softly, my voice completely unshaken by her words. "And that is why you will spend the next twenty years of your life sitting in a six-by-eight concrete cell, wearing orange canvas, eating cold oatmeal, and realizing that every luxury you ever enjoyed was granted by the son you tried to destroy."
"Thane! Wait! Please!" she begged, her rage instantly collapsing back into pathetic, slobbering terror as I began to stand up from the stool. "What about Sloan?! What about your little sister?! She's only twenty-four! You're destroying her life!"
I looked down at her through the glass, holding the receiver close to my mouth one last time.
"Sloan was offered a plea deal this morning," I said coldly. "If she agrees to testify against you in court as the primary instigator of the home invasion, the prosecutor will reduce her sentence from twenty years to eight."
Corrine’s face went completely dead blank. "What...?"
"Sloan signed the plea agreement ten minutes ago," I smiled—a cold, terrifying expression. "She traded you for twelve years of freedom, Corrine. Your own daughter threw you to the wolves to save herself."
"No... Sloan... my baby..." Corrine whimpered, dropping the telephone receiver. It hung by its coiled black wire, dangling pathetically against the metal counter.
May you like
I set my receiver back onto its cradle, buttoned my charcoal suit jacket, and walked out of the visitation room without looking back once.
Behind me, the sound of Corrine Sterling screaming and wailing echoed off the concrete walls, fading into the sterile silence of the prison corridors.
