The Bellrose Grand had been built to make ordinary people feel as though they had accidentally walked into somebody else’s life.

The visiting room at the central county holding facility was stark, cold, and smelled faintly of industrial floor cleaner and stale sweat.

A thick partition of reinforced safety glass divided the room into two halves. On my side sat a plain metal stool anchored to the concrete floor. On the other side sat Adrian Mercer.

He looked unrecognizable.

The tailored three-thousand-dollar suits were gone, replaced by a loose, ill-fitting orange cotton jumpsuit. His silver hair was uncombed, sticking up at odd angles. The sharp, arrogant tilt of his chin had completely vanished, replaced by a hollow, sunken posture that made him look twenty years older than his age.

His wrists were bound together by steel handcuffs that clinked against the metal counter as he picked up the gray plastic telephone receiver.

I picked up the matching receiver on my side of the glass.

I didn't say anything. I simply waited, holding the receiver against my ear, looking into his eyes.

"Marina," Adrian's voice crackled through the small speaker in the receiver. It was raspy, weak, and stripped of all its former elegance.

"You asked to see me, Adrian," I said, my tone flat, emotionless.

He looked down at his handcuffed hands, his shoulders trembling slightly. "I... I wanted to apologize."

"Don't waste my time," I replied coldly. "You didn't ask me to come to a county jail to deliver a fake apology. Arthur said you had information about my mother."

Adrian let out a long, shuddering breath, his eyes flickering up to meet mine through the thick glass.

"She knew," Adrian whispered.

My hand tightened around the plastic receiver. "Knew what?"

"She knew I was taking money from the capital accounts," Adrian said, tears forming in the corners of his hollow eyes. "Two months before she died... she called me into her private office late at night. She showed me the preliminary discrepancy reports she had ordered from an auditor in Chicago."

I felt my breath catch in my throat.

"She didn't call the police," Adrian continued, his voice shaking violently. "She didn't fire me on the spot. She sat across from me at that mahogany desk... and she cried, Marina. She told me she was heartbroken that a man she considered a brother would betray her family for numbers on a screen."

A tear slipped down Adrian's gray cheek, leaving a wet streak in his stubble.

"She gave me sixty days," Adrian wept. "She told me if I repaid the missing funds from my personal real estate holdings and resigned quietly, she wouldn't prosecute. She wanted to protect Julian’s future. She didn't want my son ruined by my greed."

I sat frozen on the metal stool, listening to his confession, feeling a profound, aching sorrow bloom in my chest.

That was so like my mother. She had always tried to protect people, even when they were stabbing her in the back. She had given him a second chance—an exit ramp to save his dignity and his son's future.

And how had Adrian repaid her?

"And then her heart gave out," I whispered, my voice trembling with sudden, intense anger. "And instead of taking her mercy, you decided to forge my name and sell her company out from under her daughter."

"I panicked!" Adrian sobbed through the telephone line, pressing his forehead against the glass partition. "The Chicago investment market collapsed! My personal holdings were wiped out! I couldn't repay the forty million! When she died... I thought if I sold the company to Vane Capital, I could cover the theft, pay off her estate, and nobody would ever know what I had done!"

He looked up at me, his face twisted in a pathetic plea for forgiveness.

"I didn't mean to hurt you, Marina! I swear to God, I didn't want to ruin you! I just wanted to escape!"

I looked at the broken, crying man sitting behind the glass—a man who had traded his honor, his freedom, and his son's future for a handful of shell companies and a temporary lie.

"My mother offered you mercy, Adrian," I said softly, every word echoing clearly through the receiver. "And you threw it in her face."

I stood up from the metal stool, holding the receiver near my mouth.

"You will spend the next ten years in this place," I told him quietly. "Julian will spend five. And while you are sitting in a cell, thinking about what you lost, my mother's company will continue to thrive, her employees will continue to be cared for, and her name will remain untarnished."

"Marina! Please!" Adrian cried out, pressing his hands against the glass as the heavy steel door behind him opened and two correction officers stepped into his room. "Marina!"